2015

Business Plan Competition 2015

Sponsored by Raj Singh (EE 1968)

Final Results

IIT-R Heritage Foundation Business Plan Competition 2015 has now been completed. This year's event was very successful and attracted over 30 entries. The overall quality of entries and business ideas submitted continue to get better with each passing year.

The Executive Summaries were evaluated on a published criteria to select entries moving to next round. Each team received written feedback and those teams moving forward also received mentoring from our panel. The teams in this round prepared and made a live presentation online to a panel of judges. They also spent nearly 8 weeks refining their business plans based on feedback and mentoring. Both were evaluated using the same rubric. With high quality ideas and plans and extremely hard working entrepreneurs it was a tough competition and very little separated the teams from each other. The final standings were based the evaluations at every stage of the process.

We had many strong entries but none exhibited exceptional innovations so the panel decided to not give Most Innovative Idea award and instead give the Runner Up awards to two next best entries which were extremely close in rankings. 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 IIT-R HF website along with a brief description of their business.

Some other interesting observations:

  • Received 28 entries by the deadline of which 24 met the qualification criteria. Nine of these advanced to presentation round.

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

  • There were at least 5 judges present for each presentation and evaluations.

  • We had to turn away 6 entries that came way past the deadline.

  • All finalists stuck through 2 month process, good indication of their bright future.

We couldn’t have done this without the help of many volunteers. I’d like to thank Ray Mehra, Manoj Goel, Harish Goyal, and Gyan Saxena for reviewing entries, providing mentoring and feedback, evaluating presentations and final plans. Special thanks to Mr. Raj Singh for his generous sponsorship, to Johri Dhanotra for donating unlimited use of Social Scallop and providing 7x24 support along with Kate Stevenson, and Sourabh Gupta for helping promote the program.

If you’d like to help out as coach or application reviewer or in any other capacity please contact me. I will also welcome any feedback you may have to improve the event for next year.

Prady Misra

prady.misra@iitr-heritagefund.org

Want to get involved and help participants benefit from your knowledge and experience? Please contact Entrepreneurship Chair. The time commitment is approx 20 hours over a period of 3 months.