Conquest is a business plan competition organized by Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS-Pilani. It has carved a niche for itself by the way of judges’ feedback and excellent pre and post competition mentoring which have catapulted bright ideas into successful start-ups.
The competition is open to all students and corporate in the country. It encourages business plans from all sectors - IT, Manufacturing, Pharmacy, Health Services, Rural Development, Infrastructure, Biotechnology, Finance & Marketing, Web2.0, Business Consultancy, Retail, Media etc. In the last five years, the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at BITS Pilani has scaled Conquest from an intra-BITS contest to an international B-Plan competition that receives close to 500 entries and has an 80% start-up rate of winners.
With prizes of more than INR 1,50,000 and Angel funding opportunities up to INR 1,00,00,000 ($200,000) and an ever expanding circle of mentors, judges, investors and incubation facilities, Conquest 2009 promises its participants a highly challenging and rewarding experience.
Tie ups with Department of Science and Technology as well as the Technology Business Incubator at BITS Pilani help in providing incubation to the winners. Apart from this there is also a vast pool of resources offered by TiE and NEN who are actively associated with CEL.
Judging and Mentoring
Judges and mentors include the crème de la crème from the corporate as well as academic sectors. This also includes venture capitalists and investors from firms such as Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Siemens Venture Capital, Rajasthan Venture Capital Fund, ICICI Ventures, BlueStream Ventures amongst others.
Past Winners
Mobile Medics(which was later acquired by Nicholas Piramal), Habits Edutainment (whose founder Sasi Kant was featured on the Asia’s best entrepreneurs under 25 list by Business Week), Vita Peracta (now Vita Beans Neural Solutions Pvt Ltd) a BITS Pilani team, Soltec of VIT, Nirvana Care from ISB are some of the finalists at various editions of Conquest that have all started up.
Grand Finale
After receiving over 200 entries of Business Plans from countries across 4 continents and several weeks of grueling judging by experts, 5 teams have been selected and 3 wait listed to enter the final round of Conquest which will be held on-campus at BITS-Pilani for a period of 2 days during the 8th and 9th of August. The teams will go through a simulation round where they are scrutinized by the Judges and the plans are discussed in detail before the Winner is decided.
Official website
