Patna: The Bihar Industries Association on Thursday invited innovative business ideas from the state's budding entrepreneurs for its Business Plan Competition 2018, which is scheduled to be held in September this year.

Officials of the association said that anybody who lives in Bihar can participate in the contest.

The contest aims to encourage young people with innovative business ideas to put their business models before the audience and get recognition and mentoring support, provided by the VenturePark Incubation Centre, a department of industrial policy and promotion-certified startup mentor, the organiser of the event and an entity under the Bihar Industries Association (BIA).

BIA president KPS Keshri told reporters that the main idea behind the competition is to identify viable business ideas emerging from within the state and to encourage them by giving financial and mentoring support so that the young and innovative budding entrepreneurs can launch their startup dreams from Bihar's soil.

Keshri told reporters that the winners of the competition would be given training by domain experts at its incubation centre, financial support by angel investors, and cash prizes of Rs 1 lakh, Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 to the top three startup ideas respectively.

The organisers expect around 300 ideas to make it to the third edition of the Business Plan Competition - more than double the number of proposals submitted last year.

Sanjay Goenka, member secretary of VenturePark's governing council, said that the winners of the first Business Plan Competition, Akansha Singh, and winner of the 2017 edition, Chandrashekhar Prasad, are running their own startups.

One is called Swayambhu, a community based bio energy venture, and the other is Materialhaat, an app-based platform for purchasing construction materials, and both businesses are doing well.

In a statement, Keshri said that the incubation centre which provides training to budding entrepreneurs is financially supported by the Bihar government's industry department and the India Angel Network provides technical and investor support to those with innovative business ideas.

Those interested in participating in the competition can submit their ideas online at www.biaincubator.com before July 31, 2018.

The BIA's managing committee will evaluate the business potential of the ideas to shortlist candidates.