Qualcomm Incorporated, on Tuesday announced the top three winners of its first edition of the Qualcomm Design in India Challenge (QDIC), which was launched in December 2015, in association with the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM).

Over the last 12 months, ten shortlisted companies were incubated with initial prize money of USD 10,000 each and engineering support at Qualcomm India’s Innovation Lab in Bangalore where they could transform their ideas into prototypes. In the final round, the companies were judged by the jury members consisting of Industry, Government and Qualcomm executives. In addition, the selected winners were awarded USD 100,000 each as part of the Challenge.

The winners are Carnot Technologies, iFuture Robotics and Uncanny Vision.

Qualcomm also announced investment of USD 8.5 million for expansion of their design initiatives in India, to be called henceforth the ‘Qualcomm Design in India Program’ (QDIP). Under this program two key initiatives were announced:

• The Qualcomm “Design in India Challenge II” will support companies in the areas of Rural technology, Biometric Devices, Payment Terminals, Agri Technology, Medical Technology and Smart Infrastructure.
• Enable India mobile and IoT vendors by providing advanced Camera, Audio, and RF design in India with the launch of a new Innovation Lab at Hyderabad and expansion of the current Innovation Lab in Bangalore.

“Qualcomm is passionate about innovation, every year we invest billions in risky R&D to invent technologies that bring advancements in various aspect of our lives. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society, Qualcomm is committed to offering support to help India’s ecosystem to grow and cater to increasing consumer choices,” said John Han, senior vice president and general manager, Qualcomm Technology Licensing.

“Qualcomm Design in India Challenge is one of the most successful initiatives by Qualcomm to nurture some of the talented startups in India. After seeing the overpowering response during the 2016 edition, we decided to go ahead with a second year, as well as expanding the number of participants Qualcomm nurtures through this program from 10 to 16 participants in 2017,” said Jim Cathey, senior vice president & president, Asia Pacific & India, Qualcomm Technologies Inc.