You are a single individual or a team of up to five members. You have fire in the belly and a business model in product and services track or social track which you feel is worth showcasing at the national and international level, then this is the right platform for you to give wings to your dreams. The Entrepreneurship Cell IIT Kharagpur has announced its annual global business model competition, Empresario, for 2019, the official qualifier for direct entry to the quarter-finals of the International Business Model Competition (IBMC), co-hosted by Stanford, Harvard and Brigham universities. (Visit www.ecell-iitkgp.org/empresario for more details).
Empresario accepts business ideas in all tracks, including Product & Service, Product Design and Social. Teams need not focus on developing a robust business plan, complete with financials and slick presentations, as in a business plan competition, but on identifying and precisely defining the assumptions of the new venture, testing these assumptions in the field and then pivoting (changing) based on the lessons learnt, marking a new paradigm in entrepreneurship.
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According to information received from IIT Kharagpur’s Entrepreneurship Cell, the teams behind the shortlisted entries are provided personalised 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 venture capitalists and investors. Empresario participants are mentored and supported by organisations like TiE, NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network), etc. Critical startup services like legal advice, taxation, financial, technical aspects of running a startup, co-working space, HR needs, incubation opportunities, etc. are also provided.
Every business idea entry in each of the fields, including Product & Service, Product Design and Social, gets an equal opportunity to win from the prize money pool of Rs. 25 lakhs and incubation money to the tune of Rs. 2.5 crore. Intially, Empresario had been launched in association with Calcutta Angels, Villgro, Indian Angel Network and many more.
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Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur is a student organisation established with the aim of fostering the spirit of entrepreneurship among college students in India. It carries the tag of one of the most successful entrepreneurship organisations in the country with over 60 startups incubated within 10 years of its inception.
For the first round of Empresario, participants are required to fill up a questionnaire asking in brief about their business idea and submit it. This questionnaire can be downloaded from the Entrepreneurship Cell’s website www.ecell-iitkgp.org/empresario. Participants registering now can avail of Early Bird privileges, which include extended mentoring and offline mentoring session during Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive (EAD) 2018.
Some of the past Empresario student startup winners
Swagene – Swagene is transforming healthcare by pioneering personalised medicine. If you are a doctor or patient, you stand to benefit enormously in terms of time, money and precious health !
Janch Healthcare – Janch is a mission to provide personalised, high-quality diagnosis solutions as an as-needed or preventive basis.
Gamezop – It lets you play more than 100 games by installing just one app. It also uses HTML5 to allow users to play offline. It recently raised a seed funding of $350,000.
The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur conducts its annual flagship event Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES), the largest collegiate summit in India, in January every year. The final rounds of Empresario 2018-19 will be held during GES’19.
Who Can Participate ?
There is no restriction on any individual to participate. Anyone, from students to working professionals across the world with an idea, a product or service or even an operating startup can participate.
