IIT Gandhinagar Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center (IIEC) today announced that it had lent its support to indigenous anti-microbial air purifier start-up, Airth Research Private Limited, with a seed fund of Rs50 lakh. In fact, IIEC said that it has already released the first installment of Rs25 lakhs. This funding was provided under under the Nidhi4Covid2.0 programme of Department of Science and Technology (DST) that encourages innovative solutions and products made in India in order to fight against COVID-19.
Airth Research is expected to utilize this fund to develop a household version of its anti-microbial air purifier, which can reduce and deactivate the germs, including Coronavirus-sized particles, by 99.99%. The company, founded by Ravi Kaushik, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, is involved in developing such anti-microbial air purifiers and have already made versions for large spaces. These big purifiers are currently being used by early adapters such as RBI office in Mumbai, SHCIL, and ONGC, among others.
Sharing his thoughts on receiving the funding from IIEC, Kaushik said, “It has been great to receive support from IIEC. Because of this funding, we were able to deliver our products to a cancer hospital, and now we are able to contribute to saving the lives of immunocompromised patients in that hospital. To multi-fold our impact, we will scale up our manufacturing as well.”
