The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Monday announced an ‘Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing (VC) Solution’ under the Digital India Programme, with a prize money of up to ₹1 crore for the winning team.

“The winning team with the best-judged solution will receive ₹1 crore in the first year and an additional support of ₹10 lakh per year towards operations and maintenance, for a period of three years after the first year of deployment, subject to terms and conditions of the final contract to be signed,” the Ministry said in a statement.

It said the government will give recognition and certificate from MeitY for “innovative solution” to the top 10 entries selected from Stage-1, and each selected team will receive funding of ₹5 lakh to build their prototype.

“Due to Covid-19-related safety measures, video conferencing has become very common. To encourage development of a world-class VC solution, MeitY has launched this grand challenge. It seeks to encourage Indian IT start-ups and software product companies to come up with a world-class VC solution,” it said.

The teams would present their prototypes to a distinguished jury to select top three entries. The best three entries of Stage-2 will receive ₹20 lakh each to build their solutions following the design principles and best practices, it said.

MeitY said the final VC solution should support all video resolutions and audio quality, work in low and high network scenarios, be low on usage of power/ processor, not have any external hardware dependency, and be able to work on any device.

It added that details can be found from the Ministry’s website.