Business Plan Competition 2012

This year’s competition has been very successful and generated lot of interest as evidenced by number of inquiries and requests for information we received. Eventually a total of 24 qualified Executive Summaries submitted covering breadth of areas from bio sciences to manufacturing to internet technologies that met the published criteria. These entries were thoroughly reviewed by our judge panel and each participant received meaningful feedback, advice, and suggestions on developing their executive summaries into business plans. The quality and completeness of summaries and plans were much higher this year and eight of them advanced to next round. The teams worked with their mentors and others to develop a more detailed business plan and made presentation to the panel in late July and early August.

They were evaluated based on published guidelines that included viability of idea, attractiveness of value proposition, significant market size and potential, competition, realistic execution strategies, technology and business expertise of current team, ability to attract talent, and funds and time needed to bring the product to market. The final results are as follows:

Best Business Plan Sharp Edge Learning (Mohit Agarwal, BTech & MBA 2012) INR 75,000

Most Innovative Idea Proactive Biotech (Satya Tapas, Biotech PhD 5^th year) INR 25,000

Judges’ Choice Award Catharsis (Samya Mishra, B.Arch 5^th year) INR 15,000

Honorable Mention Audgen (Sonesh Jain, Current student BTech) INR 5,000

Honorable Mention Blood Ace (Abhishek Kumar, Current student BTech EE) INR 5,000

Given the high quality of plans and very tight competition among the eight finalists the judges decided to recognize Catharsis with a special Judges’ Choice Award since it very narrowly missed out on both of the categories. All winning teams will also be listed on IIT-R HF website along with a brief description. We will contact all 5 winning participants with the next steps.

Sharp Edge Learning provides digital learning solutions which enables faculty in engineering colleges to use resources such as educational animations, interactive simulations, case studies, assessments and 2D/3D diagrams to make classroom more interactive creating multisensory learning for students and help improve their academic performance.

Proactive Biotech aims to provide a low cost kit for malaria detection for use in developing countries using a highly efficient and innovative detection technique.

Catharsis plans to provide low-cost and prefabricated housing modules as well as design solutions to cater to the increasing demand of mass housing and infrastructure. They aim to reduce energy consumption and waste generation by using recyclable and renewable materials for building purposes in prefabricated housing.

Audgen provides design and branding solutions by creative use of technology and an innovative business model that leverages skills and interests of large number of freelance design professionals.

Blood Ace is developing a low cost and effective blood pressure monitoring device and a mobile application that allows collection of data that can be used to analyze potential problems and alert patients a well as physicians.

Many people helped out in various capacities to make this a successful event but special thanks are due to Dr. Arun Kumar for publicizing the competition on IIT-R campus. Manoj Goel, Harish Goyal, Praveen Gupta and Abhai Johri reviewed entries, provided mentoring and feedback and sat through presentations and we couldn’t have done it without their help.

Our heartiest congratulations to the prize winners and thanks to all participants who took time and effort to participate in the competition and make it into a lively contest. We wish all of them the very best and invite them to stay connected and seek guidance on their start up businesses if they so desire.