NIT Trichy to Host Country's Largest International Business Plan Contest "Ventura '10"

Ventura '09 was a phenomenal success, with 244 executive summaries sent from over 120 institutions across 15 nations to claim prizes of upto INR 3 lacs, and INR 40 lacs in incubation funding. Our strong and varied Mentor Network, a group of top CEOs,

leading entrepreneurs and venture promoters chose thirty of the best plans and provided them guidance and direction giving their plans a whole new dimension. Eight teams made it to the final and presented their plans before a panel of distinguished judges and were awarded points in categories such as innovation, relevance to the technical and the marketing spheres, financial stability of the plan and competence of the team.

Ventura '09 was arguably one of the largest student led business plans competition in India in terms of reach, participation, number and quality of mentors, awards and the number of companies incubated. The winning team of Ventura 09, 'CardioCure', from GeorgiaTech, USA will set up at the ICICI Knowledge Park, Hyderabad as the largest soft landing venture in India ever.

The E-Cell of NITT is back again with Ventura '10, bigger and better than before with a cash prize of INR 4 laces and Incubation support of upto INR 1 Crore for each of the finalists, apart from a bigger Mentor Network. Ventura 10 will be held in three rounds spanning a period of four months. The whole process culminates with the final presentations during the Ventura 10 finals held at National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirapalli.ROUND 1: ONLINE SUBMISSION OF EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

For the preliminary round, all participating teams will have to submit an Executive Summary of their business idea.

• The team should submit an executive summary of their business plan in a PDF or DOC or simple TEXT file as their entry for the first round.
• An Executive Summary is basically an abstract of your business idea. It should contain all the details pertaining to the plan that the participant feels necessary and appropriate. We provide the team freedom in tems of size of the summary.Generally a 2-3 page summary in the format given below is sufficient.
• The executive summary should have 1.5 line spacing, 12 point Times New Roman font and 1 inch margin on each side. Not following the format is a sufficient reason for disqualification.
• The registrations for the First Round will be open till 15th November 2009 .
• The completed executive summary should be uploaded during the time of registration. The file should be named as: VENTURA_(Team Name).PDF.

ROUND 2: MENTORING SESSION ·

• 30 teams will be short listed from Round 1 based on their Executive Summaries and the results will be declared on 25th November, 2009.
• The teams will then be assigned mentors for a mentoring period of 45 days to guide them in plugging the loop holes and fine tuning their B-plans. The mentors will be entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and/or consultants who have considerable experience with business plans.
• NOTE: Team inputs will be taken for assigning mentors. However the actual assignment of mentors to the team is at the sole discretion of the Ventura organizing committee.
• At the end of the mentoring session, the teams will be required to send in their detailed business plan [email protected] team shall submit a copy of their Business plan on or before 2300hrs IST of 7th January 2010. Each entry should have a cover page mentioning the following details:

a) Team ID.

b) Name(s) of team member(s).

c) Contact information.

• The name(s) of team member(s) or their institute should not appear anywhere else in the body of the B-Plan. 
• Based on the submitted business plan, a final list of 12 teams will be selected from the top 30 and the results will be declared on 15th January 2010.
• The short listed teams would then have to confirm their participation on or before 20th January 2010 by registering for the finals at www.ecell-nitt.org/ventura/finals

Round 3 : Ventura Finals

• Third and final round of Ventura 10 is a combination of two presentations that the team needs to make during the Ventura 10 weekend to be held on the 30th and 31st of January 2010 to an elite panel of judges, in person, at the NIT, Trichy campus,
• The first of these presentations will be an Elevator Pitch to be held on the 30th of January, 2010 in front of a panel of Angel Investors and Business Incubators. ·
• The final detailed presentation of the business plan will be made on the 31st of January, 2010,
• The presentations can be in .PPT/Flash or any other format that the team considers appropriate for the event. However the Ventura organizing committee will not be responsible for supplying the required software/packages to support the format.
• A maximum of 3 members from the team may present their plan in front of the panel of judges for both the presentation rounds.
• Presentations slots are allotted by drawing lots. The order will be established at the beginning of the day 1 of the finals and informed to the teams at the start of the contest.
• The time duration for the final presentation will be 20+10 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for Q&A session with the jury).
• All teams must necessarily make both the presentations during the Ventura 10 weekend to be eligible for the final evaluation.
• All teams will be allotted an additional 10 minutes of time to interact with the jury after all the final presentations are made on day 2 of the finals.
• This is done so that the teams are able to discuss points with the jury which they would not otherwise want to disclose in front of the audience. ·
• If the team so desire they may also request for an additional 10 minutes for their product demonstration. This request has to be made while registering for the Ventura finals. The Ventura organizing committee may or may not provide this slot based on time constraints.

For more details regarding the Ventura '10, visit www.ecell-nitt.org/ventura