ZEPTO NOVA
DPIIT STARTUPINDIA
🏆 About the Challenge
As India’s quick-commerce ecosystem scales to lightning-fast delivery speeds, ensuring food safety across high-velocity supply networks is critical. Zepto Nova is an enterprise innovation duel designed to eliminate human errors during product inwarding, storage, and dispatch. The challenge calls on deep-tech builders to deploy AI, computer vision, and automation inside Zepto’s massive network of dark stores and mother hubs to create smart, self-correcting supply chains.
📅 Critical Dates & System Timeline
- Application Start Date: June 7, 2026
- Application End Date: July 7, 2026
- Application Result Date: September 30, 2026
- Application Status: Registration & Proposal Gateways Fully Open
- Organizing Authority: Zepto Limited, in corporate collaboration with the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) and the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
🧬 Detailed Eligibility Criteria
The selection panel will validate applicants based on these professional requirements:
- Startups: Must be registered with the DPIIT (or actively navigating the registration pipeline).
- Innovators & Enterprises: Open to early-stage technology companies, MSMEs with highly scalable software/hardware architectures, and academic or research institutions holding deployable prototypes.
- Maturity Curve: Welcomes solutions from Ideation Stage, Validation Stage (MVP), Early Traction, through to Scaling Stage entities.
💡 Core Problem Statements & Engineering Themes
Submissions must target the central theme “Smart Food Safety: AI, Automation & No Human Error“across these three primary tracks:
1. AI-Powered Expiry Detection & Validation
- Build automated computer vision pipelines to instantly read, log, and validate product expiry dates during the warehouse inwarding phase.
- Eliminate manual data entry to create a fail-proof defense against stale inventory moving into the active storage matrix.
2. Intelligent Food Safety Monitoring Systems
- Deploy AI surveillance infrastructure to evaluate staff hygiene and inventory handling practices in real time.
- Integrate IoT sensor arrays to track environmental anomalies (temperature spikes, humidity shifts, or contamination risks) with automated instant escalation alerts.
3. Automated Quality Control for Perishables
- Create vision-based quality grading models to detect structural defects, spoilage, cracks, or discoloration in fresh produce (fruits, vegetables, eggs).
- Build algorithmic shelf-life prediction engines coupled with automated physical sorting/rejection mechanics.
📥 Step-by-Step Submission Instructions
- Account Generation: Register and authenticate your profile on the official innovation hub using your validated corporate email or contact number.
- Compile the Dossier: Populate the submission fields describing your technology infrastructure, integration readiness, and growth potential.
- Upload Documentation: Attach system design charts, architectural briefs, and deployment videos. Lock your form before the July 7, 2026 cutoff.
🎁Rewards
- 🥇 1st Winner: ₹3,00,000 (3 Lakhs)
- 🥈 2nd Winner: ₹2,00,000 (2 Lakhs)
- 🥉 3rd Winner: ₹1,00,000 (1 Lakh)