Dr Vivek Kolladikkal Premandhan, a Research Fellow at NUS Mechanical Engineering (ME), led his team to win the Grand Final of PIER71's Smart Port Challenge 2019, beating 23 other international entrants from USA, Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Also on the team are NUS ME PhD students, Peter Farouk Ramzy Beshay and Nisim Shushan. Besides winning a cash prize of $10,000, all competition teams may apply and receive a grant of up to S$50,000 from the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) to develop and pilot their solutions with maritime companies.
PIER71 Smart Port Challenge is an annual innovation competition for global technology start-ups to address challenges put forth by the maritime companies in Singapore, and 2019 marks its third run. Organised by MPA and NUS Enterprise, the challenges focused on the areas of port operations, shipping and ship management, maritime logistics and services. From some 200 applications, 24 were chosen to participate in PIER71 Accelerate, a five-week market and business model validation programme that comprises weekly masterclasses, networking events, domain-knowledge sharing sessions, pitching classes and a two-day bootcamp, culminating in the Grand Final, where 10 out of 24 start-ups pitched to an audience of over 300 investors, corporate partners, venture capitalists, and maritime professionals.
Dr Premandhan founded Dravam, a deep-tech start up under NUS's Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP) earlier this year. Dravam services the maritime sector with its innovative solutions on Online Fuel Quality Monitoring, developed on foundations of several years of experimental research into multiphase flows in NUS ME's Multiphase Flow Loop Laboratory. Dravam addresses the challenges in the bunkering sector, providing an online fuel quality monitoring solution to provide real-time information regarding fuel quality, by scanning the entire fuel transfer in the bunkering pipeline. The technology is patented by NUS and exclusively licensed to Dravam.
"It has been an exhilarating experience being part of Smart Port Challenge. PIER71 Accelerate is such a unique programme - the quality of mentorship, workshops and networking opportunities is second to none. The last five weeks has brought us closer to being market-ready and we are very honoured by this win and excited to be part of this ecosystem." - Dr Vivek Premanadhan, Dravam CEO & Founder, winner of the Grand Final
Team Dravam received the their prize from Dr Lam Pin Min, Senior Minister of State for Ministry of Transport & Health, Ms Quah Ley Hoon, Chief Executive, MPA, Prof Freddy Boey, NUS Deputy President (Innovation & Enterprise) and Mr Michael Yap, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, TNB Ventures.
