GSCOE of TECHIN of IIT Palakkad presents Samastha

Global Sanitation Center of Excellence (GSCOE) was established in Jan 2022 at Technology Innovation Foundation of IIT Palakkad (TECHIN) at IIT Palakkad. GSCOE is a center for collaborative and sustainable  innovation, incubation, scaling manufacturing, skill development, training showcase and deployment of Sanitation solutions. Technologies that provide reduction in pollutants and pathogens, reduction in use of vital resources and energy, improvement and efficiency in recovery of nutrients, energy, creation of products and bi-products that can benefit the society and also provide livelihood, safe and clean sanitation would be the primary focus of the center.

IIT Palakkad  and TECHIN in collaboration with the following entities is conducting SAMASTHA as the first Workshop cum pitch of Global Sanitation Center of Excellence (GSCOE). The organizations which are part of the Governing Council will be the driving force and change creators in this center.

• HDFC BANK (through its CSR is the funding agency for the Incubation of teams under GSCOE)
• Principal Scientific Advisor’s Office (PSA office) knowledge and guidance partner
• International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials (IAPMO) knowledge and guidance partner
• Toilet Board Coalition(TBC) Knowledge and guidance partner
• ERAM Scientific (ERAM), the Industry collaborator for Scale testing and manufacturing
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation(BMGF) (expected to join soon)
• NGOs (including Keystone Foundation, S3IDF, DICCI) working in the Sanitation domain and tribal, women, underprivileged (including those who are involved in manual scavenging).

This version of SAMASTHA  will be an online workshop cum pitch event spread over January to March 2022. The problem statements will be based on Sanitation and details are in the guidelines document. This  is not only a standalone event and participants have to think of actually going on to make a product and deliver it to market, post the event in the incubation phase. The event being online, the hardware challenges would require the design, the drawings and simulations to be demonstrated. The selected teams after this event will be incubated by us and will get the opportunity to build their prototype, field test, mentored, assess the business viability and eventually deploy the products with innovation grant upto ₹10L. This has to be achieved in a short time span such that we can make a difference to humanity by creating a clean and safe environment. SAMATHA has two parts:

1. The Gala, panel discussion and workshop on 28th January 2022,  7 Feb 2022, 12 Feb 2022

2. The mentoring and pitch will be spanning 5th March to 16th March 2022

The program on 28th January 2022 will have three eminent speakers elucidating on Future & Innovation in sanitation for human health and environment and the Billion Dollar Opportunity that exists. The speakers are as follows.

• Dr Nimish Shah, MD IAPMO
• Mr Venugopal Gupta, MD, TBC
• Prof Ligy Philip, IIT Madras 

This will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A  for the participants to be inspired and garner ideas for their journey. Subsequently, a  Technical workshop on 7 February 2022 and a  Business workshop on 12 February 2022, will be held to enrich the young minds to innovate. The detailed schedule is given below.

The guidelines document has the criteria and other details. For further details, please check this document or contact us at gscoe@tech-iitpkd.org or +91 9400060382.