2014

Business Plan Competition 2014

Sponsored by Raj Singh (EE 1968)

Updated: Aug 30th, 2014

Results for 2014 IIT-R Heritage Foundation Business Plan Competition are in. This year’s competition was very successful and attracted over 30 entries. The overall quality of entries and business ideas continue to get better with each passing year.

The Executive Summaries which were evaluated on a published criteria to determine entries moving to next round. Each team received written feedback and teams moving forward also received coaching and mentoring from our panel. The teams in this round prepared and made a live presentation online to a panel of judges. They also submitted the business plan accommodating all the feedback along the way and they were evaluated on the same criteria. It was a tough competition and very little separated the teams from each other and the final standings were based the evaluations at every stage of the process.

There were several strong entries but none met the criteria of exceptional innovativeness so the panel decided to give the Runner Up awards to two next best entries instead of Most Innovative Idea award. The award winners for this year are:

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. Apart from the award certificates and checks all winning teams will also be listed on our website along with a brief description of their business.

Some other interesting observations:

    • Each entry was reviewed by at least 3 screeners and some were looked at by 5. A new record.

    • Reviewed 25 entries, 21 met the basic qualification criteria. Of these 12 advanced to presentation round.

    • Had 4 judges present for each presentation.

    • Turned away 6 entries that came way past the deadline.

    • Of 12 finalists 3 dropped out, we never had anyone drop out in the final round before.

Many people helped out to make this a successful event. I’d like to thank Dr. Arun Kumar, Manoj Goel, Harish Goyal, Abhai Johri, Gyan Saxena who reviewed entries, provided mentoring and feedback and sat through and evaluated presentations as well as final plans. Special thanks to Raj Singh for his generous sponsorship for this event.

If you’d like to help out as coach or application screener or in any other capacity please contact me.