Announcement
Chandigarh University students Garvit Saluja, Aditya Bhandari and Prakhar Nautiyal secured the Best Startup Award for their venture GreenHeart at NASSCOM’s Neovation 2026 (ThingQbator) and were awarded a cash grant of Rs 5 lakh. The award recognises the startup’s AI‑driven smart‑agriculture platform.
Platform and Technology
GreenHeart’s solution integrates real‑time IoT sensors with 5G connectivity to capture soil, water and environmental parameters. It also ingests open‑access satellite imagery from the European Copernicus programme—Sentinel‑2 optical data (10‑m resolution) for NDVI‑based vegetation health and Sentinel‑1 SAR backscatter for surface soil‑moisture estimation—via APIs such as Sentinel Hub and Google Earth Engine. Proprietary AI models fuse sensor and satellite inputs to generate multilingual, farm‑specific recommendations on crop selection, fertilizer dosing, pest detection and weather‑adjusted planting schedules. The team has prototyped a soil‑analysis device measuring NPK, electrical conductivity and soil sensitivity, a water‑quality monitor assessing heavy‑metal concentration, turbidity and total dissolved solids, and an autonomous submarine that patrols canals to detect micro‑plastics.
Pilot and Impact Projections
A field pilot is underway with 50 farmers across Ropar and Ludhiana. Data collected from the hardware and satellite feeds are processed through GreenHeart’s AI engine to produce detailed advisory reports. The founders state that adherence to these recommendations could raise crop yields by 15‑20 % and increase farmer profit margins by 4‑5 % of total field investment.
Funding and Institutional Support
Prior to the NASSCOM grant, the founders received a Rs 7 lakh seed fund from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The university’s Technology Business Incubator (CU‑TBI) is mobilising Rs 5 crore to accelerate the campus startup ecosystem, which has already produced over 250 startups.
University Ecosystem
Senior Managing Director of Chandigarh University, Deepinder Singh Sandhu, highlighted the institution’s A+ NAAC accreditation, QS world ranking and its role in fostering entrepreneurship. He noted that the award underscores the university’s commitment to research‑intensive education and job creation through student‑led innovation.