Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) published the FAQs surrounding the ‘Innovative Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution’. The FAQs published in view of the extensive use of video conferencing amid COVID-19 lockdown. Video-conferencing is being used for work from facilities as well as for meetings between government officials; as well as the hearings at the courts. Including the Supreme Court.
Answers Published by MeitY
(1) Who can apply & the eligibility criteria:
- Participating teams – Indian company registered under the Companies Act or complied with the definition of Start-up. 51% or more shareholding must be held by an Indian citizen/start-up. Registration is not mandatory to apply for challenge under Stage-I (Ideation). 10 teams further shortlisted will be required to get themselves registered. Additionally, they must submit the proof at Stage -II (Submission of Prototype). Followed by the Final Stage.
(2) Use of Open-Souce APIs and Codes:
- However, Open-source APIs and codes can be used. Additionally, the solution should not violate/breach/copy any idea/concept/product already copyrighted or patented. It should not depend upon external platforms for scalability, security, and connectivity. In addition, there should be an end to end encryption.
(3) Use of Cloud Platforms:
- Consequently, three winning teams of Stage-2 will get a chance of a lifetime to deploy a fully functioning product based on their working prototype at the Government approved Cloud Environment, provided by CSPs empanelled by MeitY.
(4) Can Govt. provide the funds:
- Again, the hosting of the solution for the final chosen solution will be at infra provided by the Government.
(5) Can the participants reach out to Investors:
- Participants can reach out to the investors for scaling their start-ups and products.
(6) Availability on different platforms:
- Further, the final solution should be available at all platforms such as android, iOS, web and desktop etc.
(7) Does the product has to support all browsers:
- All browsers must support the product.
(8) Do we need to host everything on Indian servers:
- The prototype and the solution will have to be hosted on CSPs empanelled by MeitY.
(9) The scale at which this solution will be used:
- The final solution should be scalable for use by central Government and all state Government.
(10) Who will be the owner of the solution:
- IPR will belong to the recipient of the final winner (Institute/Organization).
(11) For Audio captioning, how many languages are expected to be recognized by the software:
- The Video Conferencing Solution must-have features โShould allow audio to close captioning during the chat. Multilingual is not mandatory, but it is desirable.
(12)Unable to edit after submitting the application for the Video conference challenge before the due date:
- However, an already submitted application for participating in the Innovation Challenge for Development of a Video Conferencing Solution cannot be edited. Hence please fill and submit the application carefully. Furthermore, an incomplete application may disqualify to participate in the challenge.
