Team Pragati Tech
IIT PALAKKAD
Arijit Majumdar and Ankita Paul were studying their fourth year of engineering when the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. They focussed their final year project on finding a solution to the problems of healthcare sector workers in tackling the pandemic. They designed an SNH Robot that could clean, sanitize, and assist hospital staff by eliminating the need for human intervention in high-risk areas. That was the inception of Team Pragati Tech.
The concept won Arijit and Ankita several laurels and innovation awards. The duo used the cash rewards to build a working prototype of the robot, which could be remotely operated using a smartphone app. The prototype got the team an offer for incubation at IIT Palakkad, provided they underwent GDC’s I-NCUBATE program. They started their Customer Discovery process by talking to stakeholders in the healthcare sector.
The questions at hand were: Did hospitals have a sanitization problem? Were they looking to increase efficiency or reduce costs incurred on cleaning and sanitization? After speaking to a cross-section of stakeholders, the team concluded that only large hospitals needed solutions that can help them achieve a high standard of sanitization to prevent hospital-acquired infections.
The accrued data also helped them identify the decision-makers in the hospital ecosystem. Empowered with these learnings and insights, the team left GDC determined to continue their Customer Discovery exercise with large hospitals before crystallizing their product offerings.
