New Delhi: Four IIT Delhi student led-startups namely Circle, Bag-It, Onpery and I-Stem have won a grant of Rs 50 lakhs each under the Endowment Nurture Fund initiative launched by the IIT Delhi Endowment Management Foundation.

Circle, founded by IIT Delhi students Ankur Yadav and Navan Jaiswal, is a financial wellness product for organisations to provide daily salary & low-cost retirement to their employees.

Bag-It, founded by Madhukar Ranka and Dipanshu Verma, is an on-demand platform for wholesalers that digitizes the jewellery supply chain for the benefit of retailers.

Onpery (Care Form Labs Pvt. Ltd.), founded by Pramod Priya Ranjan and Nachiket Thakur, is a menstrual health startup. It aims to make green menstruation adaptable and accessible to the masses.

I-Stem, founded by Akashdeep Bansal, Kartik Sawhney, Shakul Raj Sonker and Sunil Choudhary, provides digital content accessibility solutions, through which universities and enterprises are making their digital infrastructure (Documents and Website/Mobile Apps) accessible (compatible with assistive technologies used by persons with disability for accessing the digital content) for persons with disability.

Speaking about the Endowment Nurture Fund initiative, Prof PVM Rao, Dean, Alumni Relations, IIT Delhi, said, “Many students are relinquishing placement option to start ventures immediately after their graduation. The Endowment Nurture Fund will encourage such students to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions”.

“The grant provides a cushion to IIT Delhi's student teams to take risk and experiment with innovative ideas, products, and/or business models; that in turn helps spread the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among the student community”, said Mr. Anurag Rastogi, CEO, IIT Delhi Endowment Management Foundation, while speaking about this great initiative to promote entrepreneurship.

IIT Delhi alumni Mr Alok Mittal, Co-founder and CEO, Indifi Tech; Mr Alok Goyal, Partner, Stellaris Venture Partners and Mr Parag Dhol, General Partner, Athera Venture Partners; were the members of the jury, which selected the winners.

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