Entries invited for Empresario 2016

Hyderabad: Entrepreneurship Cell (EC), IIT Kharagpur is presenting Empresario 2016 in association with the prestigious International Business Model Competition (IBMC) which is co-hosted by Stanford, Harvard and Brigham University. The best entries in all categories will get an opportunity to participate directly in the semi-final rounds of IBMC 2016, which will be conducted abroad.

EC is a student organisation established with the aim of fostering the spirit of entrepreneurship among college students in India. It is one of the most successful entrepreneurial organisations in the country with over 50 start-ups incubated within eight years of its inception. It is playing a vital role in developing the upcoming start-ups into successful companies by taking a great initiation of conducting flagship competition namely Empresario, our Annual and India’s only Global Business Model Competition.

It has been observed that start-ups with static business plans fail miserably since reality does not conform to their assumptions. Hence, there is a need for a more dynamic methodology while starting up and this is why the Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur sought to undertake a Business Model competition, which was titled 'Empresario'.

Empresario accepts business ideas in all fields which include Product and Service, Product Design and Social categories. Each of the entries get equal opportunity to win the prize and incubation money to the tune of INR 2.5 crore. The prizes and services for the winners as per last year are worth Rs.15 lakh. Previously, Empresario had been launched in association with TiE Kolkata, Mahindra Spark the Rise and Dell Social Innovation Challenge.

Empresario is about recognizing that any new venture is just a guess at a problem / solution and the only way to test whether those guesses are correct is to “get outside the building” and validate their idea with customer feedback. A business model is designed to change rapidly to reflect what you find outside the building in talking to customers. It’s more visual, dynamic and it reflects the iterative reality that start-ups face.

The shortlisted entries are provided immense help in terms of mentorship and the winners also get a much sought after chance to pitch their ideas in front of some of India's biggest VCs and investors. Empresario participants are mentored and supported by organisations like TiE, NEN(National Entrepreneurship Network) etc. Start-up Services like legal advice, taxation, financial, technical aspects of running a start-up, co-working space, HR needs, incubation opportunities, etc. are provided.

For the first round of Empresario, participants are required to fill up a questionnaire which enquires in brief about their business idea and submit it. This questionnaire can be found on www.ecell-iitkgp.org/empresario . ‘If participants register quickly, they can avail the Early Bird privileges, which include extended mentoring and offline mentoring session’ says a release from IIT Kharagpur. One of the winners of Empresario’14, Betaglide also secured the largest funding among all the startups present at Rice Business Plan Competition of around $1 million.