Promising start-up ideas get rewarded

NAGPUR: Social networking site to help people reach out to political leaders from their areas, utilizing the potential of the worldwide web to bring small, local artistes close to art connoisseurs and indulging people’s sweet tooth. These were among the basis for ideas that were seen as having the potential to bring about positive changes in the country.
These ideas were part of Innopreneurs 2015, a national idea project competition organized jointly by city-based innovations firm Lemon Ideas and the entrepreneurship cell of Institute of Management and Technology (IMT), Nagpur. Abhishek Gupta, head, TLabs, Delhi, was the chief guest. James Joseph, founder of JackFruit365.com and Lokesh Venkatswamy, MD of Innomantra Consulting, were among the jury members. Three winners were declared who were given cash prizes and got the chance to have their ideas ‘incubated’. Four other participants who were thought to have potential were given the chance to be inducted in Lemon School of Entrepreneurship. The theme for this year’s Innopreneurs was ‘Ideas for a better India’.
Sharing his own journey with the young entrepreneurs, Gupta stressed the importance of making mistakes and learning from them. As keynote speaker, Joseph said the most important things in setting up a start-up are a self-evolved idea and the right purpose to pursue it. “There are several untapped ideas that people ignore as being too stupid or too crazy to work in real life scenarios. Often, these are the most innovative solutions to our everyday problems. It was with the aim of giving a platform to such ideas that we floated Innorepneurs last year,” said Lemon Ideas founder Deepak Menaria.
“In this second edition of the competition, the ideas were more mature from last time. There is a shift in the mentality of participants who know exactly what they are doing, have done field work and research well and were generally better prepared,” said e-cell in-charge of IMT Shyam S. He also said that the participants this time around were more keen on mingling, networking and helping each other out.
Before the ideas were pitched by the 22 teams in the competition, a mentoring session with several successful entrepreneurs was conducted. “This session gave us a means to focus on our ideas better and eliminate all the fluff from our business plans and presentations,” said a participant from Chennai Vignesh G.
THE THREE WINNING IDEAS
TEAM DISCOVER DOLLAR: Winners of the competition who will get a cash prize of Rs50,000, this team’s idea is to tap the power of data analytics for fair pricing of consumer goods. The Pune-based team has designed a portal that can help consumers to reach at the current right price for a product on the basis of comparisons of all available price marks
TEAM JUNTA CHAUPAL: Securing the second position in the competition and cash price worth Rs 30,000, this Indore-based team took the idea of making democracy digital. They have developed an app that can help the voters keep track of the public representatives from their areas, discuss issues of public grievances and literally take their problems online. The aim behind developing this application is to bridge the communication gap between political leaders and the public
TEAM SWEET INBOX: The third prize winners, this Pune-based husband and wife team won Rs 20,000. Their idea is to indulge the sweet tooth for Indian sweetmeats, enabling buyers to place orders for a wide range of mithais on their portal. Whether it is the Nagpuri orange burfi, pethas from Agra or the all-time favourite Kanpuri laddu, people from any corner of the country can order their favourite sweets anytime of the year