The excitement ran high at Somaiya- RiiDL as Bibop G. Gresta interacted with the various tech start- ups and students from different colleges. With his extensive experience in start-ups, transportation, media, and finance, Bibop G. Gresta’s advice to the start-ups

The room was a buzz when he played against the Artificial Intelligence, of an automated chessboard developed by the start-ups Bhavya Gohil and Aatur Mehta, students of KJ Somaiya College of Engineering (Electronics). Delighted with his response, the students planned to gift him the “Grand Kingdom set.

Appreciating the work of Shohil Bumtaria and Affan Mandilkar of Team Eta, the fuel efficiency automotive team of KJ Somaiya College of Engineering, he asked them to join their Hyper loop team and support them with development.

He advised Akhil Varghese, Vaibhav Goradia, Shubham Shah, Mechanical graduates from Don Bosco Institute of Technology on raising funds through crowd sourcing.

Students, innovators and start-ups from Somaiya Vidyavihar and other institutes including HR. College, Lokmanya Tilak College Of Engineering, Raffles College, DBIT, IOK COE PUNE, Biolinx India, Nashik Makeradda (a maker space in Nasik) attended the event.

Said Gaurang Shetty, CEO, Somaiya-RiiDL “ The passion and commitment of Mr Bibop G. Gresta is an inspiration to start-ups.  His journey and experiences give a road map to start- ups. At Somaiya-RiiDL, conversations with such experts is one of the ways we encourage creative thinking in the role start ups can play in using technology to develop sustainable solutions for a better society.

About Somaiya –RiiDL

Somaiya Vidyavihar fosters a start-up ecosystem that encourages multi-disciplinary collaboration, accelerates innovation, and cultivates the next generation of start-up leaders.

Riidl (Research Innovation Incubation Design Laboratory) is an initiative by Somaiya Vidyavihar to nurture entrepreneurship and innovation amongst its’ Students, Faculty, Staff & Alumni.   RiiDL supports the creation and incubation of early stage companies by offering educational programming, space and infrastructure, events, industry-specific resources, intellectual property protection, access to business support services, go-to-market strategies, early-seed capital and mentorship.

With its interdisciplinary approach, RiiDL engages the vast pool of Somaiya Vidyavihar’s faculty, students, alumni and external networks to provide the education, experiences, and resources that students need to become innovators and empowering them to change the world around them.

RiiDL serves over 39,000 students and 1,500 plus faculty across Somaiya Vidyavihar’s 34 institutions in Mumbai and rural areas of Karnataka and Maharashtra. External start-ups must have faculty, alumni, students or staff from Somaiya Vidyavihar on the founding team.  RiiDL encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Registered as a not-for-profit Section 8 Company, RiiDL has over 8000 square-foot facility in the heart of the Somaiya Vidyavihar’s Mumbai campus where aspiring entrepreneurs from across all of Somaiya Vidyavihar’s schools and colleges—be they students, faculty, or researchers—can meet to connect, collaborate, and tap into a vast array resources to help develop their ideas and inventions into start-up companies.

Further, to enable access of knowledge, experience and funding for the start-ups, RiiDL has forged academic collaborations, industry-driven alliances, and participated in government entrepreneurship programs.

RiiDL has set up:

• A Technology Business Incubator
  • Nurtures technology and knowledge based ventures in the areas of  (Social, Mobility, Analytics & Cloud) and Electronic Embedded Systems, Healthcare, Agritech and IoT. through their incubation phase to a stage where they can scale-up their ventures further.
  • Is supported by National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB), Department of Science & Technology, GOI.

• A Digital Fabrication Laboratory
  • An open and collaborative workshop space for computer-driven innovation, design and fabrication
  • Has partnered with FabLab, an initiative of Center for Bits and Atoms, MIT USA.
  • Is part of a global network of  FabLabs and is recognised as a Fablab Supernode, India

• BioRiiDL, which has India’s first DIY Biolab and Bio Incubator.

About Bibop Gabriele Gresta

Bibop Gabriele Gresta is on a mission to inspire you to change the world. He is a world-renowned speaker, featured at the World Economic Forum, The United Nations, TED Talks, and other global conferences. Gresta is a respected activist in Transhumanism and Ethical Entrepreneurship, specializing in mass market community building and project design, and is currently focused on human mobility.

Gresta partnered with Dirk Ahlborn, CEO and co-founder of Jump Starter, Inc. as COO and Chairman and co-founder of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, Inc. Now, as Chairman of HTT, he coordinates a team of 800+ professionals in 40 countries. HTT was the first to begin development of the Hyperloop™, and is the largest company ever built upon a collaborative business ecosystem.

Gresta brings to HTT his knowledge as a developer, a venture capitalist, and inspirational business leader. He co-founded the influential startup incubator Digital Magics SPA, responsible for the start-up of more than 70 companies, in 2004 and served as its venture partner. He then pioneered the venture capital market in 2011 with two stock listed companies in U.K. and Germany with investment of more than 70 million pounds (net asset value of more than 100 million).