South Based IT Firm Wins Government's Innovation Challenge; Best For Employees Amid Pandemic - Report 

A Kerala-based global IT service provider - Techgentsia Software Technologies is one proud firm to become "Grand Innovation challenge" winner. They have won the awards for developing a home-grown video- conferencing solution in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. 

They will launch its innovative product Vconsol next month, with an initial target of securing one million users. On August 20, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced the results of the Grand Challenge conducted in three stages:

- ideation

- prototype

- product

In a statement issued by Infopark, the company said the multilingual, superior-quality video-conferencing app, hailed as the first of its kind in India with better audio-video than Zoom or Google Meet. It will aim at the B2B market with focus on telemedicine and education. 

"These are the two segments that are in top demand amid a new post-COVID world order, which has made health and learning increasingly e-centric. Vconsol, with its capacity to support as many as 80 active and 300 passive participants at a time, however, will not be free for the time being," Joy Sebastian, CEO of the company, said.  

Explaining over the cost involved, team leader of the Kerala-based firm said the cost in its making and marketing will make Vconsol chargeable after "a free trial of maybe a week. The team has won the tough competition conducted by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

"The fees wont be very high. We are in the process of finding resources for sufficient investment that can broaden our clientele. Our role is as technical supporters. We will install the app for them. The government will run the show, owning the cloud," Sebastian added. He further stated that the company hopes to get a million users across continents by March 2021.

As per Economic Times report, the software is capable of functioning in eight Indian languages. Also, the TSTs contract with the government is for three years, during which the firm will get an additional Rs 10 lakh annually towards the maintenance of the project.

"Having won the contest, we will start marketing the product globally," Sebastian added. TST is located in Pallipuram village in Cherthala with 60 acres of land notified as a sector-specific Special Economic Zone by the Union Ministry of Commerce, ET further reports. 

Taking a look into the contest- the challenge was part of the Aatma Nirbhar Bharat that aims to develop India's software product and mobile app economy and is also in tune with 'Vocal for Local'.