Five student entrepreneurs from Kerala have been selected to visit Silicon Valley, California, after winning the first edition of ‘SV Square’ (Startup Village to Silicon Valley), a tech competition, held here.
The event was sponsored by the Kerala Government and five other companies.
Of the 1,270 contestants from all across the state, Arvind Sanjeev, Vijith Padmanabhan, Akash Mathew, Nithin George and Jibin Jose, all aged 22, were declared winners of ‘SV Square’ by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Friday. These students will be able to interact with great IT minds during their two-week visit to Silicon Valley.
Sijo Kuruvilla, CEO of Startup Village, said from 1,268 applications received, 100 were shortlisted.
The final five were selected by a panel comprising Nasscom former president Kiran Karnik and Anil Gupta of IIM, Ahmedabad.
The programme was officially launched in January and applications were received till April.
Sijo said more applicants would be considered in the next edition of ‘SV Square’ and more time would be facilitated for the winners to stay at Silicon Valley. From this programme, Startup Village intends students to learn from experts and develop their innovative skills, he said.
Arvind Sanjeev, founder CEO of ARS Devices, and an engineering graduate from TocH Institute of Science and Technology, has applied for patent for his innovation named ‘RideSmart’ which enables car drivers to enter their vehicle without key and using their smartphone.
Impressed with his innovation, Research in Motion chose ‘RideSmart’ as a showcase application during BlackBerry-10 launch in India this year and inducted him to the BlackBerry elite club.
He had also won the Most Promising Innovator Award at Yahoo Accenture Innovation Jockeys event held last year. Vijith Padmanabhan, who did BTech from Model Engineering College, Ernakulam, is the co-founder of Dolojo Labs. Dolojo stands for ‘Do Love and Joy’ and it enables people connect and interact online. Akash Mathew is the CEO and co-founder of CIEF Technology, which was set up last year while he was doing BTech at Rajagiri College, Ernakulam. Mathew has developed a Facebook application called ‘Crush List’ which assists in creating a list of persons to whom one gets attracted.
If any person in the list also prepares a ‘crush list’ and includes the first person in that list, a notification would be given through Facebook. This list can be viewed only by the user. Nithin George Charuvila is a BTech graduate from Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Kottayam. He is the co-founder and CEO of QPlay Tech Pvt Ltd and has represented India at BlackBerry Jam Asia-2012 in Bangkok.
His app, QPlay, was chosen as one of the top five camp startups. QPlay connects a smartphone or laptop to the television and makes a smart television more smarter. Jibin Jose, co-founder of QEdge Code Studios, too had represented India at Blackberry Jam Asia-2012 in Bangkok. He has set up a company named .Retail which focuses on e-commerce.