Bangalore: The two-day National Entrepreneurship Summit, Eximius, organized by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore concluded successfully, with eminent personalities coming over and sharing their business experiences that left an indelible impact on the startup community and overall business ecosystem in India and beyond.
The renowned leadership consultant and the man behind many of India’s best-selling books linking management and mythology, Dr. Devdutt Patnaik, inaugurated the two- day event. His address emphasized the interdependence between predictability, control, power and branding, and the necessity to build a diverse ecosystem so as to capitalize on opportunities and discover one’s identity.
The flagship event of Eximius, ‘Fast Forward’, provided a platform for emerging entrepreneurs to pitch their business plans to a distinguished jury. The ideas proposed targeted the next generation of tech-savvy individuals and ranged from online shopping to smart home solutions. The winning team consisting of Ravina Mutha, Mehul Sharma and Pranay Jain pitched MIKE Messenger, an innovative integrated messaging service.
‘Game of Clicks’, the digital marketing event gave students an opportunity to collaborate with start-ups to develop and implement innovative marketing strategies.‘Disruptive Marketeers’ tested the ability of participants to devise a CSR strategy for top Indian FMCG brands. The 6 finalists proposed interesting ideas of helping chaiwallahs, vegetable vendors, homemakers, dabbawallas and construction workers among others. Team Vzards from IIM Visakhapatnam, consisting of Dipanjan Hore, Manish Ghosal, Mayank Maria and Rajesh Bhol battled it out to emerge as the winner.
On the first day (6 August 2016), the renowned theatre veteran, lyricist, singer and movie actor Piyush Mishra had the audience saying, “encore”. The key speaker for the day was Padma Shri Awardee Dr. P. Namperumalsamy, one of the founding members of the hugely successful Aravind Eye Care System. He is currently its Chairman Emeritus. He spoke in detail about the Aravind Eye Care model and its operations while emphasizing that every entrepreneur should look at his/her idea from a social angle as well.
Bzzwings witnessed more than 120 budding ventures from a variety of domains including medical research to platform-based mentorship pitching their B-plans at NSRCEL, IIMB’s open incubation center. Veena Avadhanam, NextGen; Saumil Majumdar, Edusports; Denny Kurien, Keiretsu Bangalore and Radha Kizhanattam, Unitus Seed Fund were part of the jury. The top 6 teams will be given workshops and training sessions for over a month to fine-tune their idea before they face each other again to win the coveted Bzzwings title.
‘The Other Incentive’, the event based on social entrepreneurship, saw a full house. The jury included well known mentor Nagaraja Prakasam from NSRCEL, Vijay Ivaturi from Crayon Data, Varun Bhalla from Khosla Impact and Ullas Marar from Villgro. Demitasse Energy, with Vijay Prateik and Disha Sharat, clinched the enviable title of winners of the event. Their idea was based on an engine that works on the Rankine cycle, aimed at providing clean water.
