A high-energy, two-day Rajasthan Start-up Fest ended here on Sunday with prizes for the best student business plan, given away by the state government's chief secretary, C S Rajan.
The first prize of Rs 50,000 was won by LMNIT, Jaipur (Kaustubh Khandelwal, Gaurav Singhal, Ayush Gupta and Avinash Jha) for a start-up idea, ‘Authentic–a SaaS based concept for securing online user profiles’. The second prize of Rs 30,000 went to BITS, Pilani (Arpit Gupta, Naman Singhal, Rohan Singh and Aman Varma), for a pitch on ‘Flame Systems — Smart Inventory Management Solution’.
The third prize of Rs 20,000 was shared between BITS, Pilani (Pranav Kulkarni, who presented ‘Review Rate — a website which aggregates product reviews and generates meaningful insights from them’ and IIM–Shillong (Ishan Pasrija and Cheena Pasrija, who presented ‘Apna Chotu’, a ‘bridge between villages and the opportunities present in the cities nearby, using a hyper-localised e-commerce model, coupled with collaborative consumption’. All three winners will also get co-working space from Startup Oasis for 3 months and web hosting credits of $1,000 from Amazon Web Services.
Chintan Bakshi, chief operating officer, Startup Oasis, the state’s leading incubation centre, said of 27 start-up ideas, at least 18 evinced serious interest for funding. For the Student Business Plan Competition — Ideate, as many as 50 colleges were invited through North India, with 270 teams participating.
The two-day fest was organised by Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation, with Startup Oasis as co-organiser. CIIE at IIM Ahmedabad joined as knowledge partner for the event.
The Start-up Fest provided an opportunity for students, aspiring entrepreneurs, mentors and investors to come on one platform to share experiences and know about business transactions, funding pitches through mentoring, and showcasing business models and innovations.
The second and concluding day’s session on Saturday began at the Jaipur Exhibition and Convention Centre (JECC) with an inspiring ‘disruptalk’, where successful persons narrated their success stories to students, aspiring start-ups, investors and mentors.
Rahul Narvekar, founder of indianroots.com, described how he co-founded Fashion and You to create a fashion and luxury brands e-commerce store. After scaling the venture from seven people to almost 1,200 and raising $48 million, Narvekar and his team created history by breaking even within eight months.
He stressed that entrepreneurs should have passion and do their homework. Narvekar initially worked as a door-to-door salesman to pay for his education. After a stint at a teleshopping network run by UTV, he learnt cable advertising and set up a company to sell corporate advertising on local cable.
Ramana Gogula, an engineer turned singer, song writer, musician and composer, talked about his life’s story as both a professional and his transformation in the world of music. Gogula went to America and in 1996, produced his studio album.
While still working as an engineer and later as a marketing person, he produced a music video, Aye Laila, which became chart buster. He then ventured into Telugu cinema and composed music for 25 films.
Kalyani Khona, a commerce and economics graduate, set up a unique venture, Wanted Umbrella, the first global app, catering to the matchmaking and social needs of 200 million people with disabilities worldwide. She said it was her passion for these people, particularly those without sight, that enabled her to raise money. She always, she said, gave importance to mission over business.
Nishant Patni, a boy from Jaipur, set up CultureAlley and developed an app for learning English. He talked about how even a B-city like this can attract influential marquee investors like Tiger Global Management, one of the early backers of Facebook and now counting Flipkart as one of its investments. In India. Patni roped in fiancee Pranshu Bhandari, who left her job as an analyst, to start developing CultureAlley, a platform that would teach Spanish, Mandarin and English through games and quizzes.
In 2014, CultureAlley entered the global batch of 500Startups, the world's largest incubator, which helps new and start-up companies develop. CultureAlley also changed its model from a website to a mobile-only version, focused on English. "The start-up has stuck with the essentials while pivoting the medium of delivery (now mobile) and the market focus (now only India)," said Patni. ‘Small towns can definitely produce world-class companies. Though the local support system might be lacking in smaller cities, costs are much lower and attrition isn't as much of a problem," said Patni.
Hello English helps people learn English from 12 Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati. It is used by three million people.
Akram Feroze, neither a start-up aspirant or an entrepreneur, talked about his experience as a theatre person who pedals across the country and organise plays with local residents as part of Cycle Natak.
There was a panel discussion on 'You and Leadership', in which panelists Mahavir Sharma, Girish Gupta, Rajneesh Bhandari, Paresh Gupta, Sanjay Yadav, Chintan Bakshi and Puneet Mittal talked about fostering a start-up and innovation system. The moderators were Anurag Maloo and Yatin Thakur.
