KOCHI: Techgentsia Software Technologies Pvt Ltd., an IT firm based out of Cherthala, in Kerala's Alappuzha district, was selected as the winner in the central government's competition for developing the best video conference solution under the Digital India Initiative on Thursday.
'Vconsol', a product of the Techgentsia Software, founded in 2009 by Joy Sebastian, was declared the winner by Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in New Delhi.
Techgentsia will now get financial support of Rs 1 crore, with an additional Rs 10 lakh, for the next three years for operation and maintenance. The product will also be adopted by Centre through a contract for.
"The competition was held in three stages. The first involved the submission of proposal. From this, 1983 companies were selected. In the second stage, we were asked to submit the prototype. Here, only 12 companies were selected and we were the only company from Kerala. The central government gave Rs 5 lakh each for developing the prototype. In the third stage, five companies were selected and Rs 20 lakh each was given to three companies and Rs 15 lakh each for two companies," said CEO of Techgentsia Joy Sebastian.
Joy said that 'Vconsol' will now be used by the Centre for video conferencing purposes.
Announcing the winners of the Grand Challenge, Ravi Shankar Prasad said, the government was "committed to developing India’s software product and mobile app economy in a big way and efforts like this will go a long way in that direction”.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had announced an Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution under the Digital India Initiative on 12th April 2020.