Vartika Tripathi from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (SIBM), Pune, won the National B-Plan Competition 2019 at Xavier Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship (XIME), Bangalore. More than 100 entries were received from B-schools across India. Vartika presented her potential business idea on a go-to care partner for pet parents in India.
The first runner-up was Sivaprakash, from Kongu Arts and Science College, Erode, for his idea on a low-cost hearing aid.Chinmaya Naik from GH Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur, who was the third runner-up, presented an idea on affordable digital classroom solutions for the visually impaired. The winners will get free access to the incubator at XIME. They received ₹2 lakh, ₹1 lakh, and ₹50,000 as prize money respectively.
Innovation, creativity, scalability
The competition was aimed at identifying disruptive ideas and stimulating young minds to think creatively, the institute said.
Dr Ravi Gururaj, Founder and CEO, QikPod; Dr Sidhar Mitta, Director, NextWealth Entrepreneurs; Sanjay Anandaram, Member, NSRCEL Review Committee, IIM-B; and Dr Mathew Manimala, former Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategy at IIM-B, were the panelists.
Sharing thoughts on the award, Vartika said: “I sincerely thank XIME for providing us this opportunity and platform to present our business ideas. It was an enriching experience to get this exposure where we could receive productive feedback, not only from the jury, but also from the co-participants. It was great listening to the other business ideas as they were really innovative.”
Dr J Alexander, IAS (Retired), Former Chief Secretary, and Cabinet Minister, Karnataka, said, “B-plan aims at bringing out people who can be leaders and wake up the dreamer inside oneself. I wish everyone present here big successes in life. Initiatives like the National Business Plan Competition 2019 will help such talented students to transform their innovative ideas into potential businesses.”
Three-level competition
During this three-level competition, interested teams submitted their ideas through a one-minute video, an elevator pitch, and two-page documents. The elevator pitch broadly addressed the problem statement, solution to that problem, targeting potential customers, procedure to reach the first customer, and showcasing of any prototype or minimum viable product.