The 10th edition of IIM Bangalore’s entrepreneurship and innovation fest, Eximius, got off to an inspiring start on August 5 with a special address by Jitendra Gupta, Founder & CEO of Citrus Payments, and Rajesh Magow, Co-Founder & CEO of MakeMyTrip, who shared highlights of their entrepreneurial journey.
This was followed by Comedy Night starring Rahul Subramanian. Students then released sky lanterns at the IIM-B grounds to mark the launch of the event.
In his keynote address, Peyush Bansal, Founder and CEO of Lenskart.com, and alumnus of IIM-B, spoke at length about the need for start-ups to focus on the value they deliver to the customer.
Various events
‘The Other Incentive’, a key event aimed at promoting and supporting social entrepreneurship, saw enthusiastic participation. This business plan competition provided a platform for entrepreneurs to showcase business ideas that can bring about a social change. The jury included Srikanth Prabhu of Social Alpha and Prerna Wadikar from Rural Shores. The team comprising Akshay Bagree, Anshu Kumar and Varsha Bhardwaj of SCMHRD, walked away with the honours for their business plan based on a mobile-based personalised learning application for children in the age group of 2-8 years.
‘Karigari’ had the contestants coming up with marketing strategies for Indian art and crafts. The contestants pitched marketing strategies for promoting artworks ranging from puppets to papier mache art. Team Hope, consisting of Yogesh Suresh and Koushik Mallesh from MSRIT, emerged the winners.
‘NextUP’, the start-up valuation competition, judged the contestants’ proficiency in understanding a start-up’s business and estimating its worth in the market.
‘B-Founders’, the panel discussion on the life-cycle of a start-up, focusing on when to start up and scale and, the external contingency factors affecting a start-up, also drew a lot of audience. The panel comprised several IIM-B alumni, including Ashish Nayak, Founder and Director of Autoninja; Puneet Manuja, Co-founder of YourDOST; and Srinivas Rao Mahankali, Founder and CEO of Aujas Networks Pvt Ltd.
‘Bzzwings’ was a B-plan competition where 11 start-up teams competed for a chance be mentored at the NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Leaning — IIM-B’s start-up incubation centre — over the next one and a half months. The Marketing Case competition, which had over 1,000 participants signing up, was conducted in multiple rounds. In the finals, 14 teams presented their strategies to the jury. The ‘Yorozuya’ team from SCMHRD emerged winners.
‘Game of Clicks’, a digital marketing event, had five finalists. Team Musketeers from IIM Bangalore bagged title ‘Ultimate Marketer’. ‘Wipro Earthian’, an the on-spot quiz themed on sustainability, had 96 teams battling for top honors. The winning team was from IIM Bangalore, while teams from Christ University and Azim Premji University bagged the second and third prize, respectively.
Lasting memories
Radhika Aggarwal, Co-founder of Shopclues, shared her business philosophy with the young entrepreneurs, summarising it in two simple words, ‘Show up.’
Panel discussions and workshops were also held. K Radhakrishnan, former chairman of ISRO and an alumnus of IIM Bangalore, delivered the closing lecture.