Tomorrow (Tuesday, June 30) are the global finals of the 2009 DFJ-Cisco Global Business Plan competition. One out of 16 finalists — list here — will take home $250,000 in seed funding as well as mentorship from DFJ and Cisco. You can view the proceedings online. Two Indian companies are among the 16 finalists — Husk Power Systems and Innoz Technologies. Update: Husk Power Systems is the winner of the 2009 DFJ-Cisco Global Business Plan competition. DFJ managing director Tim Draper talks to FOX Business about the company here. Here’s a bit more about them:
Husk Power Systems: This company, headquartered in the US, is a great example of young students with their heads screwed on right. Husk Power Systems is a next generation energy company. It has developed a proprietary generator that runs on gas released by heating rice husk. The company currently provides electricity using its generators to five Indian villages, as a pay-for-use service, and plans to expand to a 100 soon – see New York Times article for more. The team is an interesting bunch. Three – Manoj Sinha, Gyanesh Pandey and Ratnesh Yadav – are natives of Bihar and in their early thirties. Sinha started exploring the intial idea — turning farm waste into electricity — while working with Intel in the US as a microprocessor designer. In 2007, he later teamed up with a fellow student, Charles Ransler (also in his thirties), at the University of Virginia, and Pandey, who was in India, to set up their company. Pandey now handles operations on the ground here alongwith Patna-based serial entrepreneur Yadav.
Innoz Technologies: Last year this Trivandrum-based startup launched SMSGyan, a text messaging interface for trivia. The company started up in August 2008 as an incubatee at the Technopark Technology Business Incubator in Trivandrum. It has also received some funding from Upstart.in and CIIE, Ahmedabad, through the iAccelerator programme. The founders — Deepak Ravindran, Abhinav Shree, Ashwin Nath and Mohammed Hisamuddin — are students from LBS College of Engineering — and are all in their twenties.
Of the two, my vote goes to Husk Power Systems, which addresses a real problem in India and already has a fairly successful track record to show. All the best.
Photo Courtesy: DFJ
I’m with you — also vote for Husk Power. I think these are the guys that someone at Shell Foundation’s fund, Grofin, told me about. Have been meaning to find out more. cheers!
We voted right. Husk Power Systems won.