Launch n Zoom 2018

IIM Udaipur Incubation Center organized a Cohort for startups from all over India i.e., Launch n Zoom, 2018 to help capacity-build for idea-level startups and early stage ventures through helping its founding team / entrepreneurs to sharpen their skills to develop offerings or products, target customer better; plan their operations / logistics and finances efficiently; create winning teams within their setups; make their ventures investment ready etc., through the intensive in-house program. The program was organized between 20th November 2018 to 01st December 2018. This, i.e., Launch n Zoom, 2018 was organized at IIM Udaipur Campus by the team members of IIMUIC who are; CEO Mr. Umamahesvaram Mandi, Manager operations, Ms. Aastha Bhatnagar and Associate -Incubation ecosystem development, Mr. Gaurav Kanthaliya.

Over 100 applications were received and after evaluation 18 teams got selected for the cohort. And these startups were of the domains Healthcare; Transportation; Sports-Analytics; Services Businesses; Water; AI in Psephology; Aggregation Businesses; FMCG and distribution.

Interesting information break-up of the startups that participated:

Sessions were organized on the subject matter related to Business model design and Sustainable Business development, Design thinking, Services and Products Marketing, Accounting and Finance, Legal aspects of Business, People management, IP and Patents, Equity and Banking Finance options, Business planning, Startup Mistakes and how to avoid them etc.

The Session Leaders were faculty with industry experience and names such as Ms. Sapna Popli, Mr. Rahul Pandey, Mr. Ashish Khandelwal, Ms. Vidhya Srinivasan, Mr. Deepak Saksena, Mr. Sridhar Lakshminarasimhan, Mr. Jayant Nasa, Mr. Madabosi Sreenivasan Venkatesh, Mr. Rishabh Vardia, Mr. Munish Sabharwal, Dr. Shailendra Mathur, Mr. Dhruv Bhushan, Mr. Gaurav Mantri etc. with their backgrounds of Industry Practitioners and academics with real-world experience. Apart from them, a set of startup founders, prospective-investors and the various ecosystem partners in the startup world were part of this cohort and the subsequent business hand-holding (i.e., typically incubation).

On Nov. 30, 2018, Pre-Demo day was organized where all the startup teams presented their business in front of the entrepreneur-academic-technologist jury panel (in two groups).

After the evaluation of presentations by jury members, 6 teams were selected to present on the Demo day i.e. Dec. 1, 2018. On the Demo day guests as, jury members were Mr. Sushanto Mitra, Ms. Rashmi Bansal, Mr. Ganapathy Subramanian who shared their thoughts and discussion with all the participants. Afterwards, they evaluated the presentations of 6 selected teams and announced 3 winner teams.

The Jury members to select the winners comprised of a panel of Ms. Rashmi Bansal – Celebrity Author and Entrepreneur; Mr. K Ganapathy Subramanian – CEO Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund and Mr. Sushanto Mitra – Founder and CEO, Lead Angels

Valedictory speech was given by Prof. Janat Shah – Director IIM, Udaipur and Special guest Dr. Anita Gupta – Department of Science and Technology at the end of the program. Participation and achievement certificates were awarded and mementos to the Jury members were given on the Demo day on 1st December 2018.

This program is followed up with a 52-week Business-Mentoring, Technology connect and Prototype Development Continuum for the selected startups to help launch their businesses/ventures at IIM Udaipur Incubation Center.