By: Trisha Pande

Our very own dynamic SLP fellow and Co-Program leader from the Hyderabad chapter, Vaishali Neotia, has made the entire SLP community proud. Her startup, Merxius, has just won the prestigious Aegis Graham Bell Award 2014 in the category ‘Innovation in Augmented Reality’!

The Aegis Graham Bell Award is a prestigious award conferred to innovation in the fields of Telecom, Internet, Media and Edutainment. It is awarded by the Aegis School of Business with support of COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India), TCOE (Telecom Centre of Excellence) and Deloitte as knowledge Partners. The award has previously gone to many notable companies like Airtel, Idea, Lava, Spice, Uninor, NIIT and many others.

When asked what it meant to win this award, Vaishali replied “Winning this award is a huge honour and we consider it a big achievement. After two gruelling rounds, the jury chose our product MARMO over other already established and large companies’ innovations. It is almost a case of David vs. Goliath and it is a huge boost of confidence. This will spur us on in creating more innovative products.”

Vaishali Neotia, the Young and Inspiring Entrepreneur:

In 2010, Vaishali graduated from the Osmania University with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics engineering, proceeded to attend the Indian School of Business in 2013 for the 10,000 women entrepreneurs program and then, the Ignite program by the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 2014. She currently dexterously manages Merxius by overlooking business development, operations, client relationship management and even HR responsibilities.

On being asked to give advice to budding young woman engineers and entrepreneurs (or they could do both as exemplified by Vaishali), she said that “ it is important to realise there is more to life than following a fixed tried and tested path. Graduate, get a job, get married - this is great but you can do more. If you want to travel, do an offbeat internship or be an entrepreneur - just do it. Someone clever once said - people judge you by the extent of their potential. If someone says its impossible, it is for them, not you.”

On marriage and entrepreneurship she says “For a lot of women, marriage is something to be viewed as a be all and end all. If you make your 20s a race against time, trying to fit in a job and travelling and whatever else you can before you get married, then you lose out on entrepreneurship. It requires patience and struggle and most importantly TIME, which women find they don’t seem to have. Let marriage be a part of life that happens along with everything else, and not a goal. This will help open up so many opportunities and avenues. For this social mindset to change, the change begins with you.”

Vaishali firmly believes that women can do it all, and this is an impressive ideology to look up to.

Meet Merxius, the Revolutionary in Augmented Reality: Merxius (mer-she-us) is a technology innovation company based out of Hyderabad. They create innovative products using Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Interactive & Web technologies. They create products suited for defence, healthcare and marketing sectors.

Merxius has been innovating since 2011. They had humble beginnings as a web app development company building viral apps on Facebook. In 2012, they started work on Augmented Reality and soon won the Best Startup Award at eINDIA 2012. Since then, they have gone strength to strength adding Interactive technology and Virtual Reality to their repertoire in 2013 and 2014 respectively. The Hindu also had an article about them which you can read right here, as well as an extensive article by TechAloo.

Their latest AR product - MARMO - has been awarded for Innovation in Augmented Reality at the Aegis Graham Bell Awards. MARMO is an industrial Augmented Reality framework that aids in machine maintenance and operation. It runs on various devices including tablets and the Google Glass and other head mounted displays.

Merxius believes in the vision of India as a technology and innovation powerhouse. They want to take the ‘make in india’ concept to a whole new level.

Do visit their website to know more and encourage this exciting young company by liking their Facebook page.

Trisha is part of SLP’s talented team of Marketing Interns.  She is a first year Sociology student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women by day and a dreamer by night. She takes an active interest in participating in activities pertaining to writing and researching. Books constitute a very integral part of her life, and she prefers reading about diverse subjects. Currently, she enjoys reading about the condition of women in the Middle Eastern countries because the vast difference in global cultures enthrals her. She is a correspondent for her college magazine and occasionally does content writing for different societies like NSS. Animals spark her interest, and she volunteers at the Friendicoes shelter. She enjoys interacting with her fellow interns and spitballing ideas.