Saksham, the Ecell of IIM Udaipur organised its start-up fest Prarambh 2020. Prarambh is a mentorship-cum-competition for existing start-ups with minimum viable products and new ideas.
This year, Prarambh has spread its wings wider by eliciting over 200 applications, and expanding its network to include certified business mentors, and experienced start-up investors, the institute said. A total of 24 teams with diverse ideas like nano anticancer solution for cancer side effects in healthcare, wealth management solution in fintech, an economic cold storage solution in agriculture, and other IoT based solutions sector were shortlisted and have undergone mentorship. Mentors include Deepesh Goel who has worked with Atal innovation Mission and Akhilesh Trivedi who is a global mentor and strategist for start-ups.
On February 9, these teams pitched their ideas to the panel which comprised V Srinivasan, Ex CEO of Multinationals; Sridhar Rallanbandi, Ex-President and Chief Risk Officer of Lakshmi Vilas Bank, and other venture capitalists. The start-up team Pawshbox, a marketplace for petcare was awarded ₹60,000. As a special mention, ₹20,000 was awarded to team Nanopure, an ISRO certified nanoscale solution to the water problem in India.
Nurturing future-leaders
Team SVA Robotics won ₹50,000 for providing an IoT based solution to solar panel cleaning.
The winning teams were awarded flight tickets to Singapore for the ISET 2020 conference.
Prof Janat Shah, Director, IIM Udaipur, said that entrepreneurship is one of the core values of IIM Udaipur and the institute is committed to nurturing future-leaders and entrepreneurs who will power their organisations, create innovations in products and services in the emerging economies. The keynote speakers — Siddharth Rajhans, Principal Policy Officer, United Nations and Founder, Spacify Inc; Nirmala Sankaran, Co-founder, HeyMath; and Pankaj Thakar, Founder, Padup Venture — encouraged students to become entrepreneurs.