Three Teams Take Top Honors at ISHOW India

May 12, 2017

Team SWACHH discusses manufacturing optimization with (left side, back to front) Noel Wilson (Catapult Design), Guruprasad Rao (Imaginarium) and Madhukar Sharma (ASME) at ISHOW India. The team was named one of three winners at the competition, which was held last month in Bengalaru.

Eight teams of socially conscious inventors faced off at the recent ASME Innovation Showcase (ISHOW) in Bengalaru, India, presenting their novel hardware-led innovations to a panel of judges from the global development field. At the end of the daylong event, three of the start-up companies — Saral Designs, Coeo Labs and Innovision — were named the winners of ISHOW India, which was the first of three ASME ISHOWs taking place this spring. The three grand-prize winners of ISHOW India, which took place April 27 at Le Méridien Bangalore, will share in more than $500,000 in cash prizes and in-kind technical support, including ISHOW’s extensive design and engineering review of their prototypes.

Team Saans gives their pitch to the judges at ISHOW India. The team’s entry is a multi-powered neonatal breathing support device for maintaining respiration and oxygenation.

One of the winning teams, Saral Designs, is the creator of SWACHH, India’s first locally designed and manufactured automatic machine for producing high-quality, ultra-thin sanitary napkins. The second ISHOW India winner, Coeo Labs, is the developer of Saans, a portable continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device for maintaining respiration and oxygenation in neonatal patients with respiratory distress syndrome. The third winning prototype, Innovision’s BrailleMe, is a device that enables the blind to access digital information instantaneously in their own tactile script.

The ISHOW winners were selected on the basis of four criteria: knowledge of the customer or user; hardware validation and development; manufacturing optimization; and the team’s strategy for implementation. The competition’s eight entries were judged and advised by a panel that included Noel Wilson, creative director at Catapult Design; Arun Venkatesan, product realization expert for Villgro Innovations; Ritu Verma, co-founder of Ankur Capital; Guruprasad Rao, director of Imaginarium; Sandhya Kedlaya, head of corporate communications at Henkel India; and Anand Narayan, member of the ASME Engineering for Global Development Committee.

Innovision was the third winner of ISHOW India with its device BrailleMe, which allows visually impaired people to access digital information instantaneously.

Ten finalists will compete at each of the two remaining events: ISHOW Kenya and ISHOW USA, which will take place in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 25, and Washington, D.C., on June 22. For more information on ISHOW India, a complete list of the ISHOW India finalists, and details on ISHOW Kenya and ISHOW USA, visit the competition website at https://thisishardware.org.