21 student teams pitch products at IIM Bangalore's Student Innovation & Product Summit 2026

Finalists from across India presented software innovations in AI, digital trust, and technology for social impact before an industry jury

3 August, 2026, Bengaluru: The Centre for Software & Information Technology Management (CSITM) at IIM Bangalore concluded the Student Innovation & Product Summit (SIPS) 2026 on 30th July, with 21 undergraduate teams from across the country presenting software products before a panel of academic and industry judges.

The daylong event, held at the IIMB campus, opened with an inaugural address delivered by Prof. Sourav Mukherji, Dean, Faculty and Professor of OBHRM, followed by two rounds of team pitches and Q&A sessions, and closed with a winner announcement in the afternoon. Three teams were declared winners: one overall winner and two theme winners, chosen from among finalists who had spent several weeks refining their products before the summit. In addition, three other teams received honorable mentions in recognition of their work.

CSITM set up SIPS to respond to a gap it had observed among undergraduate students. Many build software projects as part of coursework or personal interest, but few get the chance to test those ideas against structured feedback from mentors or industry professionals, or to think through what it would take to turn a class project into something people would actually use. SIPS was designed as a one-day platform where students could present their work, receive direct feedback, and discuss questions of product design, scalability and market fit with people who work on these problems professionally.

“Every year, we see undergraduate students build technology that is often more ambitious than they realize. What is usually missing is not talent, but the space to test an idea against real feedback and understand what it takes to turn it into something people will actually use. That is the gap SIPS is meant to fill”, said Prof. Mayank Kumar, Chairperson, CSITM and faculty of Information Systems at IIMB.

The 21 finalist teams had been shortlisted from over 600 applications received at the start of the process and worked through weeks of mentorship and product refinement before the final pitches. On the day, teams presented in two sessions, with judges asking questions on technical execution as well as business viability.

Projects were grouped under three themes: Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Systems, Digital Trust & Infrastructure, and Tech for Impact. Entries ranged from AI-driven tools to platforms addressing trust and security online, and applications aimed at social or community problems. Judges evaluated the products on technical quality but weighed several other factors just as heavily, including product thinking, scalability, feasibility, user-centred design and real-world applicability.

The judging panel included Ravi Ranjan, Founder & CEO, Dhobi G; Ravi Kumar Gaurav, CEO, ZongoVita; Diljith Kannan, Senior Lead – Technology, IIMBx Digital Learning Foundation; and Balaji Hariharan, Co-Founder, BlueOneAI. Their involvement gave students real-world insight into how tech founders and builders evaluate product ideas, moving beyond simple academic grading.

"What stood out through the day was how many teams had thought past the demo. They were not just showing that the code worked; they were thinking about who would use it and why. That instinct is hard to teach in a classroom, and it is exactly what a summit like this is meant to draw out”, said one of the judges.

For CSITM, the summit is part of a larger argument it has been making about undergraduate technology education: that writing working code is only part of building something useful. Turning an idea into a product that people will adopt requires thinking about usability, cost, scale and the problem it actually solves, and that kind of thinking is rarely part of a standard computer science curriculum. Events like SIPS try to introduce students to that discipline early, before they graduate and either join the workforce or attempt to start companies of their own.

That gap matters for India's broader technology and startup ecosystem. A large share of the country's software talent comes out of undergraduate programmes, and the country's startup sector depends on a steady supply of people who can move between technical execution and product judgment. By exposing students to mentors and industry evaluators while they are still in college, CSITM aims to shorten the distance between a classroom project and a product that could eventually find a market or become a company.

“SIPS is not a one-off event for us. We want it to become a fixture that student innovators can build towards every year, and one that grows in scale and in the range of mentors and industry partners it brings in”, said Prof. Mayank, adding that plans for the next edition are already underway.