Goa has become the first state of India to win a global prize for excellence in maintaining robust, reliable and people-friendly land records. The award was presented by the Geospatial World Forum at a conference held at Rotterdam, Netherlands. ‘Dharnaksh’ is an e-governance project of the Goa state directorate of settlement and land records. The e-governance project, launched in June 2012 has so far received 29,278 visitors. The data is accessed using a website which allows users to view and print extracts of land records in Goa, all this while sitting at any part of the world. 15% of the users of the website are from abroad.

The Goa Land Revenue (Inspection, Search and supply of copies of Land Records) Rules have been amended to provide legal validity for issue of digitally signed documents.  This will enable ‘Dharnaksh’ to take a new step in early June 2013 by allowing users to download digitally signed copies of land records. The award ceremony program also comprised of awards in other categories and had winners from the Australia, Azerbaijan, China, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the USA.

Andrea Colaco,Native of South Goa’s Velim, has not only earned a graduate and master’s degree, and later earned one of the most-sought after doctorate seats at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute Technology (MIT), but has earlier this month won the MIT $100K entrepreneurship competition for her innovation which provides real-time, millimetre accurate 3D gesture sensing on devices like mobile phones. 

The innovation was presented at the competition as ‘3dim’ solution, set up by Andrea with co-founder Ahmed Kirmani. It achieves high-quality 3D sensing by employing patented signal processing methods invented at MIT by the co-founders.

“Now with the prize money, 3dim will go full steam. We will develop the technology for customers-smart-device manufacturers-who have already expressed interest in the product,” she said.

Andrea is a recipient of the Goa scholars award 2010 and has a masters degree in media technology from MIT in 2010, after completing her undergraduate degree programme in electrical and electronics engineering from BITS, Pilani in 2007.

Kaavay, an up and coming IT startup incubated at GITIC, has taken the next step in its business life cycle by registering itself as a Pvt Ltd company. 

It has also shifted its base of operation into a swanky new office situated in the GCCI building in Verna Industrial Estate. Kaavay was started around a year ago by budding friends and entrepreneurs Mohsin and Rohit. Starting right out of college they have come a long way in their venture by build a strong 15+ team and acquiring impressive clients in Goa and world over.   

Inaugural Pictures 

Startup Goa wishes them all the very best. Cheers!

GITIC organised its third edition of Tech Friday, a monthly get together of budding entrepreneurs, VCs and stake holders from the IT industry in Goa.  The guest speaker was Ms. Biju Naique, Asst Director, DITC. She informed the gathering about various schemes by the government that are available for entrepreneurs to fund their startups. More info of these schemes can be found here.

Photo Credit: GITIC