of Management in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture
Bhubaneswar, Aug. 18: The budding managers of Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar, learned the basics of founding start-ups and launching ventures at Startup Weekend, an event hosted by the premier B-school.
Startup Weekend is a global network of leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate and empower individuals to start their own companies. It was the first event of its kind in the state. Presented by Mindfire Solutions, Startup Weekend was a 54-hour event that took place over three days from August 14 to August 16.
The first day witnessed a pitch fire round where individuals had to pitch their idea in one minute and convince others to vote for them. The top 12 most-voted ideas were selected and teams were made.
The Day 2 began with a lot of enthusiasm and zeal from the teams to build a real product, team and brand for execution in the market. The teams had to focus on three core areas - customer validation, execution and design of the idea and create a feasible business module. Throughout the day, entrepreneurs such as Ankit Singh, Manish Jain, Shashank Singhal, Sibasish Mishra, Binayak Acharya and Ayaskanta Nayak mentored the teams.
On Sunday, the teams had to sum up all their data into a five-minute pitch and present to the judges, who decided the winner.
The judging panel included professor of finance of XIMB Shridhar Dash, Mindfire Solutions CEO Chinmoy Panda and founder of mysmartprice.com Sitakanta Ray.
The judges eventually chose the Appconversion team as the winner. The idea behind Appconversion was to facilitate the businesses to get their apps installed by customers. It would create a sync between a PC and a mobile, thereby providing ease to customers and profits to businesses. The winning team received free tickets to the August Fest, India's largest start-up conference.
The Stellar Grid was nominated as the best start-up idea, according to the people's choice. The event provided a platform for students to learn more about prospects, challenges and opportunities in entrepreneurship and start-ups.
This event was a joint collaboration of X-Seed, the idea and initiative cell of the XIMB, the E-Cell of the CET and Google Business Group, Bhubaneswar.
Entrepreneurs have organised over 1,000 past Startup Weekend in 110 countries since 2011. More than 1,00,000 people from across the globe are Startup Weekend alumni.