Alappuzha joined the building of an ‘AatmaNirbhar Bharat’ on Thursday with Techgentsia Software Technologies Private Limited, an IT company based at Infopark, Cherthala, here winning the ‘Innovation Challenge for the development of videoconferencing solution’ conducted by the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
V-Consol, the videoconferencing solution developed by Techgentsia, will now become the official videoconferencing partner of Government of India. It achieved this by competing against some of the biggies in the sector. According to officials, 1,983 applications were received to develop the solution. Of this, 12 applicants with innovative videoconference solutions were shortlisted. It was further cut to five for building a ready for the market product before the winner was selected.
Joy Sebastian, 44, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Techgentsia, expressed happiness at winning the challenge and thanked his 65-member team. “From now on V-Consol will replace foreign tools for videoconferencing of government meetings. We are happy to have contributed to AatmaNirbhar Bharat,” Mr. Sebastian told The Hindu.
Born to a fishermen family at Pathirappally, near Alappuzha, Mr. Sebastian completed his elementary education from a government school. After completing Master of Computer Applications, he joined Avaneir, an IT company in Kochi, in 2000. “From that time, I have been working in videoconferencing technology sector. I along with my friend Tony Thomas started Techgentsia in 2009. Later, Tony left the company. At present, we have clients in Europe, North America and parts of Asia. Winning the videoconference challenge is a cherry on the cake,” Mr. Sebastian adds.
IT partner
Techgentsia is acting as the IT partner of various projects in the Alappuzha Assembly constituency. During the 2018 great deluge, Techgentsia played a pivotal role by developing various apps for rescue and relief works. Besides, it has developed software for telemedicine, online education, school digitisation, IT platforms for vegetable aggregation and so on. Besides, the company is also supporting Snehajalakam, a palliative care unit along with helping the unit run a free food restaurant.
Financial support
As the winner of the challenge, the IT firm will get financial support of ₹1 crore with additional ₹10 lakh towards operations and maintenance for the next three years. It is also free to market the product globally.
Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac congratulated Mr. Sebastian and his team.