Zoho, Chingari, Koo and StepSetGo among winners of govt's AatmaNirbhar app challenge

The challenge received 6940 entries from all over India.
Chingari app
Chingari app
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A vernacular micro-blogging platform Koo, TikTok clone Chingari, fitness app StepSetGo are among apps that have won PM Modi’s AatmaNirbhar App Challenge on Aug 7, 2020. The AatmaNirbhar App Challenge invited startups and entrepreneurs in India to create products that could cater to India. The challenge received 6940 entries from all over India. The apps that came first will be awarded Rs 20 lakh, second Rs 15 lakh and third will be receiving Rs 10 lakh.

Chingari, which won the social media category, gained immense popularity when TikTok was banned in India by Bengaluru-based programmers Biswatma Nayak, Sumit Ghosh and Siddharth Gautam last year.

Sumit Ghosh, Co-founder and CEO of Chingari App, told ET, “We have been voted as the best app in the social media category precisely because the features we provide are tailored for the needs of the young Bharat. We will continue to serve the interests of the Indian consumers through our platform.”

Koo, which came second in the social category was launched in March 2020, and is available in 4 Indian Languages – Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. Koo, which looks to take on Twitter, allows users to post on the platform in text, audio and video formats with a 400-character limit for text, 1-minute for audio or video ‘Koos’. Some app features include following, people feed, 1-1 messaging, English-to-language keyboard, language news feeds and hyper local hash tags. Koo is looking to also launch other languages soon in the coming months.

Koo was co-founded by Aprameya Radhakrishna and Mayank Bidawatka.

Aprameya Radhakrishna, Co-founder and CEO of Koo said “We’re very excited about being one of the winners of the AatmaNirbhar App Challenge. PM Modi is giving startups, innovators and entrepreneurs a very good platform to showcase their creation and we’re grateful for this opportunity. We look forward to taking Koo to a wider India that wants to connect with people in their mother tongue.”

StepSetGo, which won the fitness category is a bootstrapped startup launched in January 2019 by Shivjeet Ghatge, Misaal Turakhia, and Abhay Pai. The app rewards users for staying fit and claims to have over 6 million registered users.

Talking about the win, Shivjeet Ghatge, CEO & Co-founder, StepSetGo says, “We are thrilled to have won this challenge and would like to thank the government and our Prime Minister for providing a platform to start-ups to showcase their innovation to the world. It is a proud moment for StepSetGo to have built a product that is loved and used by over 6 million users.  For us, this is only the beginning, we have numerous new innovative solutions lined up for our existing and new users and hope to be the catalyst for the fitness revolution that’s about to ignite in India.  

Other apps include Zoho Workplace, Zoho Invoice in the office and business categories, Disprz and Kutuki Kids in the e-learning category, MapmyIndia, AskSarkar, GimBooks, among others.

The complete list can be found here.

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