Twenty day long search in the Punjab State for the most innovative & socially useful students’ Startups through ‘Startup India Punjab Yatra’ ended up with honouring of three student-teams of Lovely Professional University. Information Technology Minister Vijay Inder Singla and Industries & Commerce Minister Sunder Sham Arora, Government of Punjab, honoured LPU students for their excelling entrepreneurial potential. Occasion was ‘Grand Finale of the Startup India Punjab Yatra’ at Indian School of Business in Mohali (Chandigarh). LPU Chancellor Mr Ashok Mittal congratulated the hardworking students and their mentors for proving their entrepreneurial skills and potential in an excelling manner. On this occasion, both the Ministers invoked students across the state to harness their entrepreneurial skills to become job creators rather than job seekers.With the declaration of ‘Punjab Yatra’ projects’ results, LPU has emerged as the University with largest number of prizes in the competition. LPU students’ teams ‘Digantra Research and Technologies’ (2nd) ; ‘Green on Green’ (3rd); and, ‘Dhaiya Agricultural Tools’ (2nd) are adjudged winners. Only 15 winning teams from the state were felicitated from among the 523 participated with their ideas submitted in five distinct fields during the “Yatra”. The fields included social sector; IT/Digital marketing/E-commerce; health and wellness; agriculture; and, manufacturing. There were three prizes each across these five categories. With only 2 prizes to its credit, GNDU Amritsar is the only other institution in the state to win more than one prize. Responding to Ministers’ invocation, Assistant Director Manish Saini at LPU Startup School informs that there are 200+ entrepreneurial projects of students, which are under works at different stages at the campus. There is also an incubation centre at the campus, with capacity of incubating and mentoring 100 Start-ups at a time, to give shape to students’ innovative ideas. In addition, important conferences, seminars, workshops are regularly organized at the campus to instil entrepreneurial spirit among students, where investors, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists are invited to mentor and encourage them.
LPU Students’ Winning Projects:
1. LPU students’ team Digantara’s innovative idea on tracking and analysing space debris in Low Earth orbits (LEOs) is a satellite project through which they are all set to enter ‘Space’, with a mission to secure long-term spaceflight safety. It is to be by developing space debris tracking and monitoring services. Team will send a mesh of micro-satellites in the entire lower earth orbit for identifying space debris objects of even 5 cm size, by acting as a great filter. After identification, team will go for data analysis of debris and provide the same, as their sales, to various private and government launchers like Space X, ISRO and more. In nutshell, it is all to control space waste, mapping & analysis, collision avoidance and orbit determination. Through this project, LPU team aims to become India’s first & leading commercial small satellite company with an innovative approach to space engineering. In fact, the team has also applied for a patent on the same idea and looks forward to revolutionize the space industry for debris management.In fact, ‘Earth’ is a big place, and if a fiery bit of space debris falls into the open ocean, it will sink without any harm or knowing. However, of the many lakh estimated pieces of space fragments orbiting earth, about many thousands of them are bigger than a softball. On average, hundreds of such objects enter Earth's atmosphere every year, which are to be tracked and monitored for safety in space activities and existence on earth.
2. LPU Team ‘Dhaiya Agricultural Tools’ has also applied patent for their ‘Paddy planting Machine’ which will certainly fulfil System of Rice Intensification (SRI) parameters in ‘Rice cultivation’. This machine is to provide better growing conditions for rice plants, particularly in the root zone, than those plants grown under traditional practices. This promises to overcome the shortage of water in irrigated rice, sends fertilizers into the roots and also controls methane gas produced during rice growth. This project is to see 40% increase in the rice production and 30-35% of water saving.
3.Feeling that near 400 electric vehicle manufacturers are in the country and 90% of the Indian farmers are small farmers, ‘Green on Green’ LPU team wants to establish an electric vehicle transportation network for carrying small farmers’ produce like vegetables to the marketing places. Through this 80% of their transportation expenses and allied works will certainly be reduced. It is to be noted that for a small farmer 70% of the input cost of farm products is transportation cost.