BITS Pilani Hyderabad hosts Startup Weekend University

Monday March 25, 2013 , 3 min Read

The first ever Startup Weekend University was held in India at the Hyderabad Campus of BITS Pilani. Headquartered in Seattle, Startup Weekend is a global grassroots movement of active and empowered entrepreneurs who are learning the basics of founding startups and launching successful ventures. The event started on 15^th March and concluded on 17^th March and was attended by 70% students and 30% experienced professionals.

The mentor list included entrepreneurs like Pankaj Diwan, CEO of Renaissance Softlabs, Ripul Kumar, founder & CEO of Kern, Satya Yerramsetti, founder & CEO of SMSCountry ,Varun Reddy, co-founder of Mauka and Hyd4Innovation to guide the selected teams and polish their ideas into real business ventures. The startups who presented at the event were judged by a panel that comprised Ramesh Loganathan, P. Ramakrishna and Dr. P Lalitha.

Pankaj Jain, the India Head of Startup Weekend quoted, By bringing students together with professional developers, designers, and experienced business people, students were able to get an experience that very few have at such a young age in just a weekend."

The first three winners of the event in ascending order are:

At third position is Fukat me Khana:

A unique business model where they offer free food if a given challenge game, puzzle or quiz is solved in a stipulated time, when food is booked through the website.

Our Take: They may have to dole out freebies if the person ordering food has a good IQ level. Though it has its own perks, it will engage customers more compared to normal online food order sites. It will require proper implementation and a framework on the challenge before it goes live. Offo has offered to the startup in initiation.

At second place is I Crush U, which also won the most disruptive idea award:

I Crush U is your solution if you ever had a problem in expressing your feelings to someone you like and helps you find out if the feelings are mutual. It has a single click process to know whether you are indeed liked by your crush and also provides the benefit of being anonymous.

Our Take: A novel idea targeting relationships between people. It looks quite similar to Huntcha. And though the market is huge for this audience we would like to see how I Crush U manages the monetization part.

And the winner is, RedControl:

RedControl is an infrared based automation system and centralized control that can transform your home to a smart home with help of any old remote control at your house. You have control over lighting, curtains, air conditioner and other appliances just at the touch of a button. Hence, the next step in making life easier and better.

Our Take: Smart homes are still being explored by giants like HP, Microsoft etc. and the race is to top is still on. We wish RedControl can beat others to the top.

StudentStory wishes all the participants best of luck in their future endeavour as entrepreneurs.