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ShareMumbai: Sakshi Jain from IIT Bombay and Dipanjan Dey from IIT Kharagpur, both third year students, are in the process of fine-tuning their business ideas into hard-core business plans. They are two of the top 10 finalists of Ideaz 2009, the pan-IIT business idea competition, organised by IIT Bombay's entrepreneurship cell (E-Cell).
Ideaz is aimed at helping students to develop thoughts that have the potential to grow into successful enterprises. This year, the event has seen a lot of participation from third year undergraduate students. Overall, 60% participation was from the old IITs and 40% from the new ones. The top two ideas will be funded Rs5 lakh each by a consultancy.
Sakshi Jain has come up with a toned down version of the Mumbai stock markets. "Our business idea is a scaled-down version of the actual share market and is targeted at, primarily, college students interested in investing in the share market.
The share amounts are huge in the actual market. But ours will be reduced in proportion and students will be able to invest in larger number of shares. Profit-loss will also be scaled-down," said Jain.
Foreign exchange will also be included and the entire process will enable students to have a better idea about the share market, while they are in college, said Jain. "Our two-member team saw potential in this idea and Ideaz has helped us to polish it and take it to the next level in business terms. Our long-term plan is to convert it into a venture," she said.
Dipanjan Dey, meanwhile, looks at providing solution to the existing issues involving renewable sources of energy. "Ideaz has been a great platform and we can plan to commercialise our idea. The online mentoring, where we could post queries, enabled us to get the entire picture regarding the feasibility of an idea, its marketing and finance aspects," said Dey.
Since both want to eventually launch their own start-ups, they now plan to compete at Eureka, the international business plan competition of IIT Bombay. Post Ideaz, the 10 teams have been allocated mentors by E-Cell to help them transform these ventures into feasible business plans.
"The 10 finalists will be mentored so that they can convert the ideas into comprehensive business plans. The top two will be funded by a consultancy with Rs5 lakh each. Last date for submission of the executive summaries for Eureka 2009 will be relaxed till October 20, exclusively for these teams," said Sanketh Parekh, events manager of E-Cell, IIT Bombay.
