During a fire, the most important part of the entire exercise by the Fire Fighting team is the rescue of the humans from the fire. With thick black smoke it becomes very difficult for the firefighters to know the exact location of the humans caught up, and to overcome this difficulty Belagavi based students turned entrepreneurs ‘SALUS’ have designed a prototype ‘Firefight Assist’ which is basically an electronic device which helps the firefighters detect humans at a range of 15-20 mts and also has a system that tracks the path of the firefighter so that the firefighter can come out by the same path and also he can detect humans at a range of 15-20mts. Still, it’s a prototype they are working on making it a finalized product and are getting incubated at NSRCEL@IIM Bengaluru.
Sharmad Tadkodkar, Yash Tendolkar, Kartik Kulkarni and Abhishek Shreyakar who were in their fifth semester at GIT, wanted to boost up their resume and when they were told about the IICDC competition 2017, they said let us do it and teamed up together for the innovation challenge.
Initially, in the beginning, stages they came up with an idea to help the firefighters, but they had no idea as to how they will develop a product which can help the firefighters but they were motivated and after a lot of research they finalized on the Fire Fight Assist.
To know about the actual issues during firefighting they had one to one meetings with the local Firefighting team in Belagavi. The firefighters said it is very challenging for them to find the people stuck in the structure on fire and also when they enter the fire struck structure they don’t know how to come out as it is an unknown structure and thick smoke affects the vision as well. So they planned to include these two features namely human detection and path tracking in their prototype. They submitted and cleared the phase I, and then had to present a technical paper which was recognized by Texas Instruments.
The team then got selected for the quarterfinals and Texas instruments supported the Prototype work with a grant of $200 worth products from TI. Now they had to come up with a Working prototype and make a demonstration video of How the product works.
Next up at the semi-final stage which was the Regional around where they had to visit Indian Institute of management Bangalore with their Prototype, where they were judged by the technical mentors of Texas instruments for the technical idea and the working of the Prototype. A business plan was also submitted and they won a cash prize of Rs.20,000.
In the Finals of the IICDC competition 2017, and they were amongst the Top 10 and were the first to be incubated at NSRCEL@IIM Bengaluru. Their startup dream had just taken up with Rs. 20,00,000 funding. At a national level, IICDC(India Innovation Challenge Design Contest) where myGov, Texas Instruments, DST(Department of Science and Technology ), Make In India all three initiatives were a part of this contest and we are the No 1 Incubate all over India.
They have now floated a company named, SALUS and they successfully filed three patents, and today students of Gogte Institue of Technology are Entrepreneurs.
Yash Tendulkar is the CEO, Abhishek Vinayak Shreyakar is the CFO, Sharmad Tadkodkar is CTO and CPO duties are taken care by Kartik Kulkarni.
They were mentored by Prof. Uttam U Deshpande, Prof. Praveen U Kalkundri, Dr. Veena V Desai, Dr. Santosh Saraf, Mr. Gaurav Kamat.
It is great to see students who have chosen this new avenue of becoming entrepreneurs so early with unique ideas. We wish them all the best.
You should check Deshpande foundation at imer