Transport management, preventing wastage of food and water, energy management, and solid waste management are among the projects that participants put up in the ‘Open innovation challenge - smart cities’, in which Andhra University and Garwood Centre for Corporate Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, collaborated.

Sandeep, Saran Raj, and Pratap, first year MBA students of IIT-Madras, have come up with a business plan for setting up a cold storage and supplying vegetables and fruits at the doorstep of consumers.

This focuses on improving the lot of farmers who do not get remunerative price for their produce and the ironic situation of consumers paying a high price with intermediaries benefiting.

“At present, 5 per cent of the 450 tonnes of vegetable and fruit is going waste owing to lack of transport and an equal quantity is perishing,” they estimate. The reason for it is not having a cold storage facility.

The two intend to set up a cold storage.

They have a model ready.

“A solar technology-driven cold storage with 5 tonnes of capacity has been taken up as a project at IIT-Madras and the operating cost comes to Rs. 9 to Rs. 10 a kg,” they say.

If they get support, they want to set up a cold storage in the NAD area.

A team, comprising Pappu Jayadev, a student of M.Tech. (Electrical Engineering) of IIT-Madras, and five other students, designed a project on reducing energy use by industrial and commercial establishments, lowering pollution by better monitoring, and a better system of solid waste management.

“Our idea is scale it up to 20 cities to be selected as smart cities in the first round by the Central Government,” he says.

Divya Suri and her team from University of California, Berkeley, designed a web platform that would help students hone their skills and by doing projects obtaining company validated skills.

“It will save companies the trouble of training students again,” she says.

Divya P, a student of five-year integrated engineering course of Andhra University and her team, worked on telecom and traffic management after studying the traffic scenario at Satyam Junction and Maddilapalem for seven days. Divya says traffic is mismanaged and the way out is automation.

Participants come up with viable models at the ‘Open innovation challenge – smart cities’