Saksham – The Entrepreneurship Club of IIM Udaipur presented the first edition of Prarambh – The 32 hour Start-Up Challenge from 7^th to 9^th March at IIMU.

Prarambh was organized with a vision to provide a launch to prospective entrepreneurs to build their ideas.

The event received an overwhelming 160 registrations from individuals coming from 18 cities across India, 15 companies and 40 colleges including reputed institutes like Boston University USA, IIMs, XLRI, SP JAIN, NITIE, JBIMS, IITs, BITS and NITs. Out of these entries, 45 enthusiasts were chosen to participate in the ultimate challenge round.

The event kicked-off on 7^th March where all the participants gave a lightning pitch of 1.5 minutes to express their innovative business ideas. This round was followed by a selection of top 6 ideas through a collective voting process.

The top teams were WedWay (an application to manage weddings), FindGuru.in (connecting with coaches from different fields like music), Anhad (helping school students find their passion), BuzzCaptor (stream trends from Twitter and Facebook), HelpMeHelpYou (finding real time answers for questions) and Artin (providing art as a service).

The next day began with the participants gathering to showcase their talents. This round was the real executioner challenge of the competition. In 32 hours, the teams had to develop a minimum viable product i.e. a working model of their ideas along with a customer value proposition, marketing strategy and a future road-map. The difficult part of this was building a product from scratch under severe time-pressure with a new team and thus testing optimal resource utilization, team working capabilities, managerial skills and decision making in a competitive environment under constraints.

The teams got 7 mentors, each a successful serial entrepreneur, to guide them during the journey of this competition. Mukund Mohan, Director – Microsoft Ventures, Pranay Gupta, Partner – 91 Spring Board, Anuj Pulstya – Angel Investor, Gaurav Mantri, Founder – Cynapta, Gaurav Sharma – Serial Entrepreneur, Nilesh Trivedi – Serial Entrepreneur and Chintan, Founder – Start-Up Oasis graced the event to mentor the 6 teams.

The teams had to conclude their final work on 9^th March, Sunday.

Eminent personalities from the world of entrepreneurship were present to judge the work of the 6 teams. Rajneesh Bhandari – TiE, Mr. Shailesh Vikram Singh – Executive Director, Seedfund Advisors and Manuj Goyal, Managing Director of Pinkcity Group Companies were part of the panel of judges.

All the teams gave captivating presentations and received massive applause from the crowd. The final teams which were adjourned winners were Wedway and Buzzcaptor.

The closing ceremony witnessed some amazing surprises. Mukund Mohan encouraged the teams to carry forward the work in their collaboration and invited them to join the Microsoft Accelerator Program. Pranay Gupta of 91 Spring Board also offered free hosting on their platforms of the projects by the winning teams.

Saksham was awarded the Best Debutant Entrepreneurship – Cell in the North Zone by National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). Rajneesh Bhandari announced that TiE would partner with Saksham for its events lined in the future.

The event culminated with a dinner and a fun-filled evening. The mentors and the judges shared their experiences of being entrepreneurs and gave inspirational wisdom to the students to pursue their passion.