Qualcomm’s Annual Design in India Challenge Provides Benefits to Deep tech Startups and Women Entrepreneurs

Qualcomm has incubated 101 startups for mentorship programs to help deep tech startups and women entrepreneurs under the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge 2023. Qualcomm started this initiative in 2016 with the objective of encouraging innovation among product companies with a focus on deep tech and iOT products across sectors such as agritech, robotics, wearables, and smart cities. The program is tailored for deep tech startups led by women founders who are at the stage of ideating their businesses. These founders can avail the benefits of the program through 101 mentoring provided by experienced leaders in the organization along with access to the masterclass.

 The benefits of the program include grants of up to 1.6 lakh rupees at the start of the incubation period, patent filing incentives in the form of reimbursements of 1.6 lakh rupees, the opportunity to incubate at NASSCOM’s COE for IoT at no additional cost, accelerator services to startups at no additional cost, benefits from affiliate organizations of Qualcomm including MathWorks and AWS Activate, the opportunity to connect with DPIIT in person, the opportunity to participate in industry events and access innovation commercialization fund which provides reimbursements for the expenses towards commercializing the product (certification costs, costs incurred towards industrial design and manufacturing).

The program also runs as a competition where three winners are selected at the end of the program by a jury and they receive 50 lakh rupees, 30 lakh rupees, and 20 lakh rupees respectively. While the registration for the program for the year 2023 has closed, the program will begin registrations for the 2024 cohort in early next year.

To know more about the program click here