ILDP, Japan-India International Linkage Degree Program of Hiroshima University held a pitch contest on March 20th, 2022. More than one hundred people who have various industry background, over the world had participated in the pitch. This pitch contest is certified as an event of Commemorative Events: Japan-Southwest Asia Exchange Year 2022 by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
A pitch is a brief presentation in which teams present their own ideas, technologies and services that they have developed.

Three seed stage teams from Hiroshima University presented their business plans after three months of concept development and mentoring by HAX Tokyo. HAX Tokyo is an accelerator program for hardware technology startups in Japan. In addition to these three teams, three early-stage startups from BITS Pilani, pitched. Each team had a lively discussion with the judges consisting of VC firms, support companies, business accelerators, and university-launched venture companies.

After the pitch, Dr. Edwin Olson, CEO of May Mobility, delivered a keynote speech titled ‘from Nerd to CEO’. May Mobility is a startup that offers autonomous vehicles and self-driving shuttle in the United States which has been succeeding the fundraise globally. In his keynote speech, Dr. Olson shared his own entrepreneurial experience and vision during the speech. He sent a passionate message to young entrepreneurs.

【Award-winning Teams】
After selection by the judges, two teams were selected for Winners. Three teams won four corporate awards. The winner teams are as follows;

■ Winners
・   Nawgati (BITS Pilani)
・   Valerio Electric (BITS Pilani)

■ Corporate Awards
・   Vital Lead Award：UW-Tracking (Hiroshima University)
・   Chuden Engineering Consultants Award：UW-Tracking (Hiroshima University)
・   Fukken Award：Good Brace (Hiroshima University)
・   NASSCOM Award：Valerio Electric (BITS Pilani)
　　NASSCOM Award winner will be entitled to use their incubation facility for three months
　　in Bangalore, India.

■ Other Award
・   NASSCOM offers UW-Tracking to use their incubation facility for three months in Bangalore
　　as well.

■ Judges
・   Miki Watanabe, Director, HAX Tokyo, SOSV
・   Yasunori Okajima, Director, HAX Tokyo
・   Yoshinobu Ichimura, Director, HAX Tokyo
・   Tomoya Shimokakimoto, COO & Co-Founder, PLIMES Inc.
・   Arya Kumar, Dean (Alumni Association), BITS Pilani
・   Sachin Arya, Head, the Center Technology Business Incubator, BITS Pilani
・   Emi Makino, Associate Professor, Hiroshima University
・   Yasuyuki Matsuura, Lecturer, Hiroshima University

■ Judges of company awards
・   Masayuki Moriyama，CEO, Vital Lead Co., Ltd.
・   Makoto Adachi, Vice General Manager of Business Promotion Dep., Fukken Co.,Ltd.
・   Koji Suto, Managing Executive Officer & Chief, Chuden Engineering Consultants
・   Navratan Katariya, Director, NASSCOM Center of Excellence- IoT & AI

【Participants】
Hiroshima University
1.   Good Brace： Shijin Zhang (Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering) and Sota Nakatsuka (School of Engineering)
　Good Brace provides optimal seismic technology, including new buckling Restrained Braces that improve the seismic resistance of buildings. This brace contributes to reducing damage in earthquake-prone countries.

2.   UW-Tracking： Reem AlOlabi and Taisei Yoshioka (Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering)
　UW-Tracking is a platform to create a strong bonded community socially and economically. Through this platform, we are trying to increase the amount of social contribution within the community and visualized it, then incentivized it. Residents will be able to share their needs or provide help through doing unpaid work and get incentivized by local currency.

3.   Profound Inc. ： Deepak Kumar (Graduate School of Engineering), Naval Kishore Mehta and Shyam Sunder Prasad (CSIR-CEERI)
　Restaurants must continuously optimize their process and manage their operations while maintaining the food-quality to bolster sales and scale business. However, limited data hinders their growth. Our AI restaurant-assisted product provides informatics related to time, space, and
effort analytics for restaurant managers to build an optimized business.

BITS Pilani
4.   Wogi India: Prakhar Vaishnav, Akhilesh Gowrishetty, Amarnath Sreekara
　We build self-sanitizing covid free phone booths to combat the transmission of covid-19 in public and commercial spaces and to boost the re-opening of India's economy.

5.   Nawgati: Vaibhav Kaushik, Aalaap Nair, Abin Asokan, Navneeth P Sagar
　With a view to transform every fuel station into a pitstop, Nawgati delivers a rapid and seamless fueling experience through the Nawgati Fueling App. Users can skip long queues, optimize their trips, avail offers and rewards, access amenities on long rides, and much more.

6.   Valerio Electric: Sarthak Mahapatra, Nirav Bhandari, Moksh Grag
　Valerio Electric is an early-stage startup providing electric vehicle charging infrastructure and tech for businesses to seamlessly integrate EVs into their operations. Their current offerings include a universal charging point (for 2,3 as well as 4 wheelers), a mobile app for EV users, and a smart analytics dashboard for host establishments.