Hyderabad: Telangana State Innovation Cell (TSIC), ITE&C Department, Government of Telangana along with the Department for Welfare of Disabled and Senior Citizens organised a Pitching Day by 18 student teams on various problem statements pertaining to People with Disabilities. The event was conducted as a part of Telangana Assistive Technology Summit 2.0.

A call to applications was launched in the second week of November to scout for the solutions at both idea-level and prototype-level from technical students across Telangana. The solutions were captured for the problem statements— Visual Impairment, Developmental & Cognitive Disabilities, Locomotor Disabilities, Speech & Hearing impairment, and Elderly & Senior Citizens.

A total of 87 teams have applied, out of which 23 (18 physical and 5 virtual) have been chosen to pitch. The pitches were evaluated by Shrikant Sinha, CEO of Telangana Academy for Skill & Knowledge (TASK), Dr. Beula Christy, Head for Institute for Vision Rehabilitation, LVPEI. Meera Shenoy, Founder of Youth 4 Jobs, and Purnima Singh, Product Development Manager at Metamorphosis Edu, and Atul Chandra Srivastava, Disability Rehabilitation Consultant, Office of the State Commissioner for PwDs, Telangana.

The event will see the top three students teams taking away prizes, and will be provided with an opportunity to showcase their solutions in the upcoming Telangana Assistive Technology Exhibition 2021. The next leg of the summit will have virtual Pitches by students from Andhra Pradesh.