The vision of ITEL Foundation is to make India a global leader in technology by driving indigenous innovation to solve India’s most complex, pressing challenges, and taking these solutions to a global scale. To achieve this vision, India needs 20 million entrepreneurs across critical technology areas including Artificial Intelligence. ITEL took on the mission to nurture India’s most promising AI startups and drive them to succeed.
ITEL joined hands with IndiaAI Mission, managed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), towards this mission. IndiaAI has been working to democratize compute power, foster indigenous foundation models and drive social growth — objectives that well align with ITEL’s goal to nurture India’s next generation of AI entrepreneurs and ventures.
Together, IndiaAI and ITEL created BuildAI, a national-level initiative to identify, incubate and nurture India’s most high-impact, highly innovative AI startups. BuildAI was charted out as a series of four events in the year, to be hosted across four diverse locations — IIT Madras, IIT Gandhinagar, IIT Guwahati and IIT Kanpur.
In the first two editions held in Chennai and Gandhinagar, we received over 500 applications from early-stage startups building AI solutions in Manufacturing, Robotics, Healthcare, Defense, AgriTech, BFSI, Urban Infrastructure, and more. BuildAI has been successful in identifying the top five startups and some high potential startups in each cohort for incubation by IndiaAI and MeitY, and co-incubation by ITEL.
The third edition of BuildAI is set to take place at IIT Guwahati in November 2026.
#BuildAI 2.0
ITEL and IndiaAI announced BuildAI 2.0, a two-day Tech PitchSprint challenge for early-stage AI startups building solutions across six focused domains: Manufacturing & Robotics, Healthcare, Agriculture, MSME and BFSI. We received 274 applications, and after a preliminary screening, 90 shortlisted startups were rigorously evaluated by an internal panel of jury, arriving at the Top 24 finalists for the BuildAI Tech PitchSprint.
DAY 1
HACKATHON
DAY 2
PITCH EVENT
WINNERS
1st Prize | Climate Tech
AI-native climate intelligence platform that delivers hyperlocal, subkilometre, subhourly forecasts for enhanced climate resilience
2nd Prize | Agri Tech
Building an IoT device and AI-driven analytics platform to improve agricultural productivity, protect cultivation, and optimize inputs
3rd Prize | Health Tech
Addressing India's massive diabetic retinopathy screening gap with a camera-agnostic AI engine
4th Prize | Health Tech
Building lightweight edge smart glasses that combine reading, scene description and navigation for visually impaired users
5th Prize | Robotics
Developing an AI-powered platform combining custom tabletop robotics hardware, pedagogy, and an AI mentor to deliver hands-on learning
Special Recognition | Health Tech
Offering a privacy-preserving, edge-based monitoring device to detect emergencies and health-related behavioural changes for seniors
After a nationwide launch, we received 400+ applications for the first edition of BuildAI. Applications were evaluated by an AI screening platform. After the initial screening, 80 startups were shortlisted for a second round of rigorous evaluation by a panel of judges. At the Finale conducted on 27th April 2026, the 23 finalists pitched their ventures to an esteemed panel of judges including some of India’s most remarkable AI leaders and seasoned venture capitalists.
1st Prize
Developing Bodh Scientific, an AI-driven platform that structures and analyzes R&D data for formulation-heavy industries
2nd Prize
Building a smartphone-based AI tool (ColpAI) to provide early cervical cancer screening in low resource, rural settings
3rd Prize
Building a drone-based fire suppression system for MSMEs, warehouses, and factories
4th Prize
Building an on-premise AI governance platform for enterprises
5th Prize
Building a national human capability infrastructure that provides verified skill records, including a Skill Passport
