Bhubaneswar: An event was recently organised in Cuttack to give a boost to the start-up ecosystem and encourage young entrepreneurs.

The Start-up Weekend is a Google-aided event, where developers, designers, marketers, product managers and young entrepreneurs come together to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch start-ups.

The National Law University, Odisha organised the event, which was powered by Google for Entrepreneurs, business incubator started by Google in 2011, partnering with local start-up communities as well as a network of co-working spaces for tech start-ups. The event saw participation of more than 30 budding entrepreneurs from various fields and backgrounds such as law, management and engineering from various parts of the country.

The event started with participants pitching in their ideas of start-ups. They then formed teams around the top ideas and spent the rest of the weekend validating and building it aided by local mentors. On the final day, the teams gave a demo of their prototypes and received feedbacks from a panel of experts.

The teams were provided with mentors from industries such as finance, marketing, technical and so on. They provided them with intrinsic knowledge of how to get their idea to function. The teams were marked on the basis of team work, market strategy, customer outreach, profitability and innovation.

"The event is conducted to motivate and encourage the students to come forward with their budding ideas," said faculty adviser to the event Sudatta Barik.

She talked about the initiative acting as a platform between the students and the plethora of dreams and aspirations that lie ahead for them.

The facilitator for the event, Ebin E. Tripjodi, talked about keeping aside of expectation, being open and welcoming new ideas and working towards a productive weekend.

The event saw six ideas be pitched in front of the judges, who will get a chance to take part in national-level start-up events where they would meet investors to launch their ideas.