Eximius 2018, IIMB’s national entrepreneurship summit, kicks off today
Titled ‘Dream Dare Defy’, the two-day event sees host of B-plan contests, elevator pitches
04 August, 2018: The 11th edition of Eximius, IIM Bangalore’s National Entrepreneurship Summit, was inaugurated at the lush green open air theatre of IIMB with the theme – Dream, Dare and Defy, today.
The event, which is the largest annual entrepreneurship summit amongst the B-Schools of India, aims to stimulate the spirit of innovation in budding entrepreneurs and students from across the country. This confluence of bright minds from across the country boasts of a wide range of events from b-plan competitions and elevator pitches to panel discussions on product startups and keynote sessions by renowned entrepreneurs.
The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell, the organizing body of the summit, was proud to host Birendra Kumar, General Manager and Zonal Head of Bengaluru Zone, Bank of Baroda, Deepak Ohri, CEO, Lebua Hotels, Ananth Narayanan, CEO, Myntra & Jabong and Yashish Dahiya, Founder, PolicyBazaar, during the inauguration ceremony who shared their experiences and learnings along their entrepreneurial journey with the students from across the country.
Prof. Padmini Srinivasan, Chair of the Post Graduate Programme in Management at IIMB, highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship and its need in today’s world in contributing towards a better global society. The faculty head of NSRCEL, which is the hub of entrepreneurial activity at IIMB, and Dean of Alumni Relations and Development, Prof. K. Kumar, was also present at the opening ceremony and provided his insights into the world of entrepreneurship.
The event is being title sponsored by Bank of Baroda, the Bengaluru Zonal Head of which, Mr. Birendra Kumar, spoke at the inauguration ceremony saying, “We, at IIM Bangalore’s Eximius 2018 Annual Entrepreneurship Summit are honored to be the title sponsors here today. As India’s major nationalized bank and a young financial institution of 111 years, this is an integral part of our commitment to promote and support entrepreneurship in the country for its economic growth and development. We look to partner with institutions like this who are pioneers in promoting entrepreneurship at large.” Another firm, Analyttica TreasureHunt (ATH), which is a highly intelligent and interactive, patented, cloud-based platform built by experienced global industry professionals to enable significantly ‘reduced time to learn’ with a high retention of practical knowledge, is sponsoring Eximius 2018 to further the tech reach of the students at the summit. Additionally, the participants are being treated to the sumptuous Swiggy’s Food Court that have been a mix of culinary feast during the fest.
The first day of Eximius saw keynote speaker sessions by K. Ganesh, Serial Entrepreneur and Partner - Growth Story. GrowthStory is the venture-builder platform that Ganesh and his wife, Meena, set up in 2011 which has helped some of India's most successful startups including Big Basket, Fresh Menu etc. Deep Bajaj, founder PeeBuddy, Rohan Ganpathy, CEO and Director, Bellatrix Aerospace, Ameet Choudhary, Founder, eLaundry, and Venkatesh Iyer, Founder, Goli Vada Pav, gave insights about their unconventional startup ideas and how they made their startups a success. Gaurav Sachdeva, CEO, JSW Ventures, and Srikrishna Murthy, CEO, Sattva Consulting, also shared their valuable insights with students of different business and undergraduate schools. Akansh Gaur, Vyom Charaya and Amit Golani formed the popular and much awaited TVF Panel, wherein they shared acumen about starting up in the online media space.
The VC and Entrepreneurship Workshop focused on various aspects of Venture Capital, its necessity and why large and successful companies cannot be built without VC or without technology. The workshop also touched upon various aspects of Aggregation and Software as a Service (SaaS), the two most talked about words in the world of Venture Capital today. The event also had speaker sessions by notable people from the industry, the list of which includes Amarendra Sahu, CEO and co-founder of NestAway, Abhishek Humbad, Founder and Co-CEO of Goodera, Rutvik Doshi, Partner and Managing Director at Inventus Capital, and Rohit Jain, Partner and Co-founder at Pravega Ventures.
The Art of Inclusion was a talk-cum-workshop by entrepreneurs of transgender community on mural paintings depicting vibrant cultures and communities intertwined into a beautiful story. The workshop was organized in collaboration with the Aravani Art Project, a social enterprise run by a transgender community, who sensitize about their sufferings and discrimination through their artistic interventions on the streets of Bangalore using colors of life. Their murals depict community bonds and friendship across differences. In the workshop, participants had an opportunity to learn mural painting first hand, from Shanthi Sonu, a transgender entrepreneur. Through this workshop, the participants not only developed a passion for art as a medium of communication but also learnt about social causes and human welfare.
Coming to contests, Bzzwings was a B-Plan competition organized in association with the NSRCEL, which saw a staggering participation of around 300 teams. The case focused on transforming innovative ideas into fruition in an attempt to take the society and industry to greater heights. The top two winning teams got an opportunity to incubate their ideas at the NSRCEL while other 10 teams got mentorship opportunity from NSRCEL.
The Other Incentive, organized in association with Vikasana, the social impact club of IIM Bangalore, was the flagship Social B-Plan competition of Eximius 2018. The competition focused on coming up with innovative ideas that would create a revolution in the social sector. The winners of the competition were Amartya and his team from Vellore Institute of Technology who came up with a product based solution to curb water crisis. The second position was grabbed by the team from the Indian Institute of Management Kashipur led by Mukund Agarwal who came up with the idea of delivering quality farm products whilst keeping them as fresh as possible.
Dr. Reddy’s Digital Healthcare competition emphasized on use of data and technology in playing a pivotal role in the pharma sector today. The participants had the option of presenting their solutions across two verticals. The first included coming up with solutions as to how Adhaar and low fidelity high frequency medical devices can come together to enable better data collection for non-communicable diseases (with a special focus on cardiovascular and diabetes), primarily in the rural and semi-urban environments. The second problem statement focused upon coming up with a solution that would increase the effectiveness of interaction between medical representatives and doctors and helping them to connect to each other through digital means.
Next Up, a valuation competition, revolved around the philosophy that valuing a startup was more of an art than a science. The participants showcased their valuation finesse before the subject experts and the startup’s own management. The event aimed to judge the participants' proficiency in understanding a start-up's business and estimating its worth in the market. Interaction with the start-up's top management enabled participants to better understand the most suited assumptions while conducting valuation. The event was judged by Anjana Vivek, founder of VentureBean Consulting and Sharath Loganathan, co-founder of Ninjacart.
Apart from these on goings, NSRCEL also conducted an Intern Fair of the first day of Eximius. During this fair, all the startups across various sectors shared their internship opportunities. Interns at NSRCEL benefited from the ecosystem of industry experts, mentors, researchers and academicians available to startups.
All in all, the first day of Eximius (which means Excellence) lived up to its name and delivered upon its promise of inspiring the 2000+ students and entrepreneurs from across the country who visited the fest to think big and innovate. Day two promises to be just as exciting and inspiring.