The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay presents Eureka! 2013

Planning is one of the most important parts of running a business. And as NASDAQ mentions it that writing a business plan will also help you to think more analytically than ever before about your industry and the role of your business within it. The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay, is back with Eureka!, the annual Business Plan Competition which aims at encouraging people all around the world to unleash their inventive potential, and flesh out ideas spanning multiple dimensions.

The edition of Eureka! 2013 has prizes worth 4.5 million up for grab and an opportunity to win an all expense paid trip to silicon valley during the Stanford E-bootcamp, at stake. The competition is being backed by Intel and Department of Science and Technolgy (DST), Government of India.

Eureka! 2013 is broadly divided into two tracks- the business track for all start-ups and the social track specifically for ventures whose mission is foccused on quantifiable social return. The winning entry of Eureka (Business) gets a cash Prizes of INR 5 Lakhs and 3 Lakhs for first runners up. For Eureka! Social, The winning entry gets a cash Prizes of INR 1 Lakh and INR 50,000 for first runners up. Further the entry with best Technology would be awarded with ‘Technology and Sustainability award’,  worth INR 3 Lakhs. A special award 'The youth award', worth 1 lakh cash prize has been introduced to encourage young entrepreneurs.

Eureka! now serves not only as a launch pad for budding ideas, but has moved to be recognised as a platform for intensive learning of the entrepreneurial ecosystem by interactions and mentorship from the leaders of this field. Eureka is now in its 15th year and has taught many on how to make an appropriate business plan right from the do's and don'ts. It started off with a competition consisting of 50 participating teams, competing for INR 50,000 to over 5200 teams participating in its previous edition, from around the world, competing for total prize money of INR 4 million.

The organizers mention to us that this year they shall also focus on Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Though MVP is not an explicit criterion which is scored, but since it proves feasibility, MVP goes miles to prove credibility of an idea.

Participate here!