By Gokul Bhagabati

Bengaluru, Dec 8 (IANS): In an effort to help start-ups showcase their solutions to a wider audience, ITC Infotech, the IT services arm of diversified conglomerate ITC Ltd, will make its flagship co-creation and technology innovation platform "iTech" an international event from 2019, a top executive said here on Saturday.

"We are planning to organise iTech in Britain and the US from next year," Sushma Rajagopalan, CEO and Managing Director of ITC Infotech, told reporters on the sidelines of the inaugural day of the fourth edition of the event here.

With its operations spread across 18 countries in the world, the Bengaluru-headquartered company employs around 8,000 people globally. It currently has three development centres in India and one each in the US and Britain.

As part of the two-day "iTech 2018" event, ITC Infotech ran two parallel tracks -- a start-up "Showcase" segment and a programing "Codeathon".

The start-up "Showcase" was designed with the objective of providing innovative technology start-ups a platform to present their solutions directly to businesses in three areas -- fintech, healthtech and Industry 4.0 -- which included, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud computing, among others.

"This platform helps start-ups compete among themselves and bring fresh ideas to the tech ecosystem," said Rajagopalan, adding that the top start-ups in each section would be rewarded with prize money.

Three winning teams will get a chance to win a prize money of Rs 2 lakh, Rs 1 lakh and Rs 50,000.

"We also nurture interested winners and take them to the market," Rajagopalan added.

The innovative start-ups can also get access to the expertise of the research engineers, analysts, business and technology consultants and industry domain experts at ITC Infotech's "Innoruption Labs" that the company set up four years ago.

"Innoruption Labs can help the start-ups develop prototypes of their solution. In many cases in the past, we helped start-ups develop their solution and bought it from them later," the CEO noted.

"But it is not necessary for the startups to join the ITC Infotech ecosystem. They can just take the prize money and find their own way to growth. The iTech is a no-string-attached platform," she added.

For the "Codeathon" segment, teams were invited to address programing challenges that included building interactive mobile user interface (UI) component using platform specific software development kit (SDK), offline analytics for mobile app, offline app sync, process automation and labour matching for farming.

"Our vision is to continue to be a very forward-looking, industry-focused technology company. We are operating with a theme of 'connected everything'. Innovation is a way of life for ITC Infotech," Rajagopalan said.