Four IIT Delhi student led-startups have received a grant of Rs 50 lakh each under the Endowment Nurture Fund initiative launched by the institute’s Endowment Management Foundation. The four IIT Delhi led-startups winning Rs 50 lakh each are Circle, Bag-It, Onpery and I-Stem. IIT Delhi alumni Indifi Tech, co-founder and CEO, Alok Mittal; Stellaris Venture Partners, partner, Alok Goyal and Athera Venture Partners, general partner, Parag Dhol were the members of the jury that selected the winners.

While Circle, founded by IIT Delhi students Ankur Yadav and Navan Jaiswal, is a financial wellness product for organisations to provide daily salary and low-cost retirement to their employees, Bag-It is founded by Madhukar Ranka and Dipanshu Verma. Bag-It is an on-demand platform for wholesalers that digitizes the jewellery supply chain for the benefit of retailers.

Onpery (Care Form Labs Pvt. Ltd.) has been founded by Pramod Priya Ranjan and Nachiket Thakur and is a menstrual health startup. It aims to make green menstruation adaptable and accessible to the masses. I-Stem, while founded by Akashdeep Bansal, Kartik Sawhney, Shakul Raj Sonker and Sunil Choudhary, provides digital content accessibility solutions, through which universities and enterprises are making their digital infrastructure (Documents and Website and Mobile Apps) accessible (compatible with assistive technologies used by persons with disability for accessing the digital content) for persons with disability.

Speaking about the Endowment Nurture Fund initiative, Professor PVM Rao, Dean, Alumni Relations, IIT Delhi, said: “Many students are relinquishing placement option to start ventures immediately after their graduation. The Endowment Nurture Fund will encourage such students to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions”.

“The grant provides a cushion to IIT Delhi's student teams to take risk and experiment with innovative ideas, products, and/or business models; that in turn helps spread the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among the student community”, said Mr. Anurag Rastogi, CEO, IIT Delhi Endowment Management Foundation, while speaking about this great initiative to promote entrepreneurship.