Budding entrepreneurs now have two platforms to showcase their business plans.

The Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, is hosting the seventh edition of ideas to Implementation (i2I), its annual business plan competition, while the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), a non-profit organisation of the Wadhwani Foundation, has launched a “Hottest Start-up Award” (HSA).

“Competitions provide much-needed visibility to start-ups, especially as they have no marketing budget and it is otherwise difficult for investors to locate them,” said Laura Parkins, the executive director of NEN.

Six new ventures in Calcutta have been nominated for the HSA. Though the figure is small compared with the number of nominations from Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai, industry watchers and academics feel it’s an encouraging start.

“We are far behind other cities but Calcutta is slowly opening up to entrepreneurial ventures,” said city-based Siddharth Goyal, whose start-up kitnebaje.com is one of the HAS contestants.

The IIM Calcutta graduate launched kitnebaje.com, a leisure planner, in August last year. The website allows users to plan meetings with friends in a coffee shop, buy movie tickets, reserve tables for dinner and even order radio cabs for a ride home or to a nightclub.

“Web businesses are easier to start and maintain than brick and mortar ones as they are more cost effective and can be scaled up more easily,” said Goyal.

Out of 500 nominations, 30 finalists will be selected through public and expert votes. The list of 30 will be whittled down to five on the basis of public votes. The results will be announced on December 23.

The preliminary round of IIM competition, organised by the institute’s entrepreneurship cell, and Intaglio, the annual B-school meet, started on Wednesday with participants presenting plan summaries.

“Shortlisted teams will have to present their detailed plan in the “Pitch” round, which will be held between December 11 and 15,” said Ankit Garg, a member of the e-cell of IIM Calcutta. The UK India Business Council is one of the partners of i2I.

The best teams will be invited to present their plans at the grand finale that will be held alongside the The Indus Entrepreneurs Conference in Calcutta on January 9 next year.