To kill stereotypes and bring forth a new generation of enthusiasts from within IIT-Delhi, Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC), IIT-Delhi was incepted. Among the wide range of events conducted each year is the E-Summit, which becomes a gathering for entrepreneurs at different stages of their career as well as prospective budding entrepreneurs. This year E-Summit 2011 was organized from 26th- 27th February within the campus of IIT-Delhi.

The innovative feature of this year’s Summit was the Young Entrepreneur Start-Up Showcase where Start-Ups with less than 2 years of existence and with founders below 28 years of age currently, participated and 30 of them were shortlisted for showcasing their start-up and gathering at one place to share and exchange ideas with each other and other attendees.

To assist these Young start-ups, the first event of the Summit was a Panel Discussion on ‘What VCs look for while Investing in Start-Ups’ with the panel comprising of Soumitra Sharma from IDG Ventures, which is a $150 million enterprise and the world’s largest IT media company with branches in China, South Korea, San Fransisco and Vietnam . The other panelists were Anirudh Singh (Canaan Partners) and Ishan Gupta (One97Mobility Funds). The event helped start-ups get familiarized with the mindset of a Venture Capitalist as well as providing them an opportunity to pitch. The event was attended by all start-ups, but also budding and established entrepreneurs.

This was closely followed by Black Series lecture- historically witness to Tarun Tejpal, Vinod Dham and Sanjiv Bhikchandani- with Anil Patni (GM, Tata BP Solar Limited) as the speaker who spoke at length about the need of Renewable Energy Sources, the unexploited market in the domain and how it could turn out to be a hub of entrepreneurial opportunities. At the end of the event, the Start-Up Showcase was launched, as the whole crowd busied themselves understanding and appreciating the ideas and passion of the young entrepreneurs.

Some of the notable start-ups were Twtbuck- commercial advertising through Twitter, b10 Media- a social media management startup with an upcoming youth newspaper Youth360, Innovese Technologies- with products like yo! CAPTCHA.

Another keynote address was delivered by Professor Anil Gupta (IIM-Ahmedabad) – founder of HoneyBee Networks, who was thronged by enthusiastic attendees at the end of the event for views on specific topics, due to his expertise vision. The final event of the day was the Business Quiz, where more than 50 teams participated to celebrate the culture of knowledge in the domain of business.

27th morning was witness to the first TED-x event at IIT-Delhi with 100 select attendees listening to the professional speakers delivering ‘Ideas worth Spreading’ with the theme titled ‘Passion’. The first speaker abiding to the 18-minute rule of TED-x was Mr. Pradeep Gupta- the founder of publishing house Cybermedia, who shared his views on the changing entrepreneurial trends in India, and where the growth story can become a disaster. Professor Dinesh Mohan (IIT-Delhi), who was the idea behind BRT Corridor succeeded him with a talk restricted on Entrepreneurial Ethics, and whether passion was a sufficient condition to succeed. He drew widespread appreciation for describing entrepreneurship as a means of change rather than a profit hub. Other speakers were Mr. Kishore Chakravorty who is a market observer and familiarized with the changing consumer market in India and Mr. Aseem Sadana (iSango) who explained how to move from ideas to execution. However, the notable speaker was Mr. William Bissell who developed a new theory altogether in an entrepreneurial way to alleviate poverty with the aid of parameters like Aggregate Economic Activity (AEA) and Targeted Catalyst (TC) of each individual. 

The other interesting events for the day included Workshops on Business Valuation and Business Modeling, with the audience being encouraged to participate in the interactive setup. A case-study competition was also organized, followed by the event-concluding and entertaining B-Roadies.

Thus the Summit was a 2-day bonanza for enthusiasts about new ideas, passion and making it big in life.

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