Government launches contest to scale Covid-19 vaccine distribution

The government has announced a contest inviting participation from innovative startups and emerging technology specialists to augment and scale the COVID Vaccine Intelligence Network (CoWIN) system.

The platform is a digitalised platform which will be used to effectively roll out and scale up the mechanism for COVID Vaccine Distribution System, nationally. The Grand Challenge which was announced by Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister for electronics and IT on Wednesday will run till January 15, 2021.

“India‘s innovators have played a crucial role in our fight against COVID19. I invite innovators and startups for a grand challenge to strengthen the CoWIN platform for roll out of COVID19 vaccination program across India,” Prasad said.


The content has been launched in association with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW).

The CoWIN Grand Challenge winners will get rewards totalling up to Rs. 3.85 crore with the top two contestants from the challenge getting Rs. 40 Lakh and 20 Lakh respectively post successful integration of the solutions on the CoWIN platform.

MoHFW has identified seven focus areas of technology development to address the likely limitations associated with a complete and effective vaccine distribution system. The areas include infrastructure, monitoring and management, dynamic learning and information systems, constraints of human resources-including technical capacities, vaccine logistics management and tracking enlisted beneficiaries for any adverse event following immunization on a real time basis.

The Challenge kickstarts with the registration process at https://meitystartuphub.in and the top 5 applicants will be provided the CoWIN APIs (Application Programming Interface) to prove the efficacy of their solutions for possible integration with the platform.