PU DIC, UIET, awarded startup grant

Chandigarh, November 19, 2021: A 7 member student team from Design Innovation Centre(DIC), Panjab University has been funded Rs.5,50,000/- by MHRD, Institution’s Innovation Council(IIC) for developing a Filament Extruder Machine START-UP.
 
UIET is the only team from North India to have been funded, out of a total 131 teams across the country. IIC-Panjab University inspired a multi-disciplinary B.E. student team-Ishank Bansal(Team Lead), Shubham Rattra, Tanya Aggarwal, Sachin Singh, Navudhay Pratap Singh, Vivek Mishra and Sakshi Gandhi under the able mentorship of faculty members -Dr Prashant Jindal,  Dr Mamta Juneja and Dr Rakesh Tuli to develop this innovative product. This machine has been going through various design upgradations over the past 1 year in the Medical Devices & Restorative Technologies lab at DIC, UIET, Panjab University, Chandigarh 
 
This team competed in the 2nd edition of IIC-National Innovation Contest (2020) where the students from IIC-Institutes took part in this competition that was designed in a way where each team will traverse a path from problem identification and ideation to building business model and finally entering the phase of Enterprise development in a time period of one year process through multiple elimination rounds that were conducted in an online  mode due to pandemic to identify the most innovative and useful Proof of Concepts(PoCs) developed by engineering students. 
A total of 9000 plus teams were  scouted from more than 900  IIC institutions across India and got 1400 odd best prototype nominations from Institutes for further evaluation and support. After multiple rounds of evaluation and mentoring rounds and training, finally 410 reached a level of development of a business plan for their innovations. Students cleared competitive rounds of evaluation which involved extensive knowledge of business plan, clinical trials and commercialization aspects. 
Then finally 131 teams from the program NIC 2020 and YUKTI2l.0 were selected for finals and after going through rounds of assessment and pitching, finally, 45 teams were selected for funding and incubation linkage support.
 
Out of these,  team  UIET was finally selected for Grant Support of Rs.5,50,000/- and Incubation Linkage by MHRD. 
 
The startup Simply 3D is a 3D sector-based venture that develops and constructs wire extruder machines that produce low-cost filaments used for FDM-based 3D printing by utilizing waste/virgin plastic shredded pellets. This machine was developed with the funding and technical support from DIC (Medical Devices & Restorative Technologies lab) and aspire to contribute towards the Made-in-India policy by setting up India-based wire extruder machine manufacturing venture and by allowing customers to shop and invest in a sustained environment for 3D printing by reducing plastic waste consumption.