Conquest

Conquest
Type	Startup Accelerator Program
Industry	Venture Capital
Founded	2003
Headquarters	Bangalore , India
Website	conquest.org.in

Conquest, an initiative by students at the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus is India's first Student-Run Startup Accelerator. Their program includes online mentoring to the ten most exciting startups from across the country over six weeks, connecting them with field experts. Following this, the startups undergo a ten-day mentorship program in Bangalore. The program ends with the Grand Finale where these startups pitch before India's biggest investment firms and media houses.^[1]

BITS Pilani's Startup Ecosystem

BITS Pilani, a renowned university in India. With a legacy of producing exceptional business minds, BITS Pilani has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of startups in India.

Noteworthy Statistics

• Startups: Over 1000 startups have been founded by BITS Pilani alumni.
• Valuation: Alumni have contributed to the creation of 13 Unicorns (valued at $1Bn+) and 1 decacorn (valued at $10Bn+).
• Fundraising: These startups have collectively raised over $18 billion in funding.
• Global Impact: The university boasts a network of 3500+ founders and co-founders across the globe who are BITS Pilani alumni.

Supporting Entrepreneurship

BITS Pilani supports budding entrepreneurs through various initiatives:

• CEL: More on that in the next section.
• PIEDS: The university's incubator, aiding BITSian startups.
• Education: Offers a specialized course in New Venture Creation featuring insights from prominent founders.
• Startup Policy: Allows students to take a year off for entrepreneurial pursuits, a rare offering among universities worldwide.

Notable BITSian Startups

Among the most prominent startups with BITSian involvement are:

• Unicorns: Including Swiggy (a decacorn), BigBasket, Groww, Postman, ofBusiness, Zeta, MPL, ClearTax, MapMyIndia, GreyOrange Robotics, Netskope, Eruditus, and FalconX.
• Other Well-Known Ventures: Such as Zivame, redBus, Sugar Cosmetics, and Pixxel.

Illustrious Alumni

BITS Pilani has produced notable alumni who have made significant contributions to various industries, including:

• Entrepreneurs: Sriharsha Majety (Co-founder, Swiggy), Phanindra Sama (Co-founder, redBus), Richa Kar (Co-founder, Zivame), and Hari Menon (Co-founder, BigBasket).
• Corporate Leaders: Rakesh Kapoor (former CEO of Reckitt-Benckiser), Baba Kalyani (Founder and chairman of Bharat Forge), and Sunil Duggal (former CEO of Dabur).

CEL

• At the heart of various initiatives taken to promote the entrepreneurial spirit that BITS is known for lies the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), the students’ efforts to take BITSian entrepreneurship to the next level. CEL is the E-cell of BITS Pilani, which promotes entrepreneurship at all levels through various initiatives. Through its projects, CEL not only focuses on promoting entrepreneurship amongst students on campus, but also taps into impacting the local community around us, and nurturing entrepreneurs at the national level in India.
• CEL has 5 main projects:
  • E-Week: This is a unique initiative that is run entirely by first-year students at CEL. The event is a week ideated by the incoming CEL batch to promote entrepreneurship on campus through various initiatives such as activities, events, talks etc. This event allows the incoming batch of CEL to have their first brush with entrepreneurship, handling everything from ideating the structure and building the event, to managing the logistics, fundraising and promotional activity related to the event. One of the highlights of E-Week is Bedrock: an event where the batch is split into smaller groups, with each group taking over a restaurant at Cnot and trying various strategies to get the maximum revenue at their restaurant. This involves a points system where each team can also get multipliers and additional points for doing crazy things like getting someone to colour their hair, shave their head etc. As the incoming batch of CEL, this is one of the most fun ways to understand what goes into starting and managing something end-to-end
  • Summer in a Startup (SiS): This is an initiative to offer students on-campus firsthand experience with the startup ecosystem by offering them internships. We collaborate with various startups to open internship positions exclusively for BITSians, and connect them with interested BITSians. This allows the startups access to a talented pool of students while giving BITSians the opportunity to get a personal feel for the startup world.
  • Desert Hack (DHack): Desert Hack is another initiative for BITSians to experience entrepreneurship and possibly even meet their co-founder on campus. The event is a business design competition where students form teams and go through various sessions, workshops, and use resources provided to them by CEL in order to build a new idea and pitch it to a jury of experts. DHack comes with the unique opportunity of helping students understand how to find the right problems, and what are the best approaches to create a startup solving that problem. Winners of DHack also get access to cash prizes and resources to scale their idea from CEL.
  • Rural Entrepreneurship Development (RED): RED is CEL’s innovative way to create social impact in the rural community in and around Pilani. We take the business approach to help uplift people in the nearby villages by identifying various challenges there and finding creative ways to solve them. RED’s most recent initiative is Project Raila, which targeted upliftment of women in the Raila village near Pilani by helping them set up a papad business that now delivers to the messes at BITS. This has allowed these women a great opportunity to learn how to manage a business, and has made them financially independent and given them the freedom of making their own decisions.
  • Conquest: More on that below.

Conquest

Mission

Conquest aims to support and catalyze the growth of some of the most promising early-stage startups in India by providing them with an equity-less grant, mentorship, networking opportunities, and access to resources that can help them refine their business models, scale up, and achieve their potential.

At its heart Conquest aims to foster an ecosystem that supports the growth of startups and seeks to create more value for the startup ecosystem in India. Through its various initiatives, including the accelerator program, national summits, and online and offline workshops, Conquest aims to impact millions of startup enthusiasts in the country and help drive innovation and entrepreneurship in India.

Features

Zero Cost, Zero Equity:

• Conquest is a zero-cost, zero-equity accelerator program for startups.
• The program is free to register for and does not require any equity from the participating startups.

Mentoring:

• Conquest offers personalized mentoring to participating startups.
• The mentorship program includes one month of online mentoring followed by a one-week accelerator program in Bangalore.
• For community building, Conquest offers pods where startups are grouped together. This provides a supportive community where startups can learn from each other, share experiences, and collaborate on projects.
• For personal coaching, Conquest offers one-on-one mentoring sessions where startups can receive personalized guidance and support from experienced mentors. This helps startups to identify and overcome their unique challenges and develop effective strategies for growth.
• For inspiration and knowledge, Conquest provides knowledge sessions inspired by Sequoia Surge. These sessions cover a wide range of topics related to entrepreneurship, including market trends, fundraising, product development, and more. They are designed to provide startups with valuable insights and information that can help them to succeed. These knowledge sessions are led by renowned industry leaders such as Nithin Kamath (Founder and CEO, Zerodha), Vaibhav Sisinty (Founder, Growth School), and Dev Khare (Partner, Lightspeed Ventures).

Networking:

• Conquest offers networking opportunities to startups through its established network.
• Startups can connect with investors, industry experts, and other key stakeholders in the ecosystem.
• The Demo Day in Bangalore, provides founders a chance to showcase their startup to a wider audience, giving them the opportunity to pitch in front of investors, industry leaders, and media houses, with prize money up for grab.

Funding Opportunity:

• Conquest also provides startups with access to funding opportunities through its network of industry leaders, corporates, VC firms, and angel investors.

Equity-Less Grant

• Conquest provides select-few startups with an Equity-Less Grant
• The program has dispersed over 1 crore rupees in prize money in just 3 years(‘20,’21 and ‘22)

Resources:

• Conquest offers a range of resources to startups, these include credits from organisations like Zoho, AWS, Freshworks and many more.
• In 2022, Conquest offered resources to 100 startups, which included access to a combined pool of resources worth over $100,000.

Journey

• In 2004, Conquest was established as a B-Plan Competition under Apogee, with the finale taking place in LTC.
• In 2009, the organizing team discussed and planned to take Conquest to Delhi for the first time.
• In 2011, mentoring sessions were held in multiple cities to support and guide participating startups.
• In 2012, the Conquest Grand Finale was hosted in Delhi for the first time.
• In 2014, CEL decided to discontinue Conquest and focus on on-campus activities.
• In 2015, Conquest returned and rebranded themselves as a Startup Competition instead of a B-Plan competition.
• In 2018, Conquest shifted to an Accelerator Model with the finale taking place in Bangalore.
• In 2020-21, Conquest adopted an online model due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In 2022, Conquest returned to a hybrid model, with the finale taking place in Bangalore.

Timeline

• Conquest is a 2-month-long hybrid accelerator program designed with an intensive focus on mentorship and networking, to create an ecosystem that enables startups to achieve their potential. The program consists of a 7-week online program followed by a 1-week offline accelerator held in Bangalore, which culminates with Demo Day.
• Registration for Conquest typically opens 2–3 months before the start of the program. As a sector-agnostic startup accelerator, Conquest works with early stage startups with founders from all walks of life.
• Registrations for Conquest are kicked off by a Launch Event, consisting of various panels, speeches and interactive sessions. Aimed at creating a buzz in the startup ecosystem.
• Conquest '22 was a highly successful program, attracting over 2000 registrations from startups across various sectors and industries. This impressive turnout is a testament to the value and reputation of the Conquest accelerator program.

Past Editions of Conquest

Startups

• Conquest looks to cater to startups still in the early stages, pre seed, or seed funded startups.
• Over the years, some of the top names to have been part of the Conquest cohort include:
• Thinkerbell Labs, featured on Shark Tank India S1, picked up funding from sharks including Peyush Bansal and Anupam Mittal. Trivia: Was a BITSian track startup. Backed by the likes of the Indian Angel Network and LetsVenture. Raised $700K+ in funding
• BiteSpeed: Previous winners of the BITSian track in Conquest 2020, Part of Sequoia Surge’s cohort of 2022. Backed by Kunal Shah, FirstCheque and Whiteboard Capital. Raised $1.9M+
• Trell: Notable investors in Trell included the likes of Sequoia Capital, Fosun RZ Capital, Samsung and Mirae Asset. Raised $60M+.
• SocialCops: The founders eventually developed the company into Atlan, which is a $500M company today. Notable investors included the likes of Sequoia and Insight Venture Partners.
• IppoPay: Backed by the likes of Better Capital, Blume Ventures and Coinbase. Raised $2.4Mn+
• Gamezop: Raised $4.6Mn+, backed by the likes of Bitkraft Ventures and Phanindra Sama of redBus.
• Visit Health: Notable Investors include the likes of MapMyIndia and Kunal Bahl (Co-founder of Snapdeal and Titan Capital). Raised over $8.9Mn to date.
• Green Tiger Mobility: Making a dual-powertrain (EV that can switch between Petrol and Electric with just one button). Conquest 2022 Pan-India track winners
• NewsReach: Conquest 2021 Pan-India track winners

Sponsors

Investment Partners

• Antler
• Titan Capital
• Bessemer Venture Partners
• Accel
• 100X.VC
• Beenext
• Stellaris Venture Partners
• IndiaQuotient
• DSG Consumer Partners
• FirstCheque
• Elevation Capital
• Nexus Venture Partners
• Chiratae Ventures
• Blume Ventures

Media Partners

• CNBC, Conquest 2015 on CNBC
• Business Standard
• Financial Express
• Business Insider India
• MoneyControl
• Inc42
• Economic Times, Conquest 2020
• TOI, Conquest 2015
• Yourstory, Conquest 2016
• IndianExpress, Conquest 2015

Ecosystem & Outreach Partners

Mentors

Our previous edition featured over 500 hours of mentoring from a pool of 100+ mentors from Organizations such as

• Meesho — Chetan Kalyan (VP of Engineering)
• Dunzo — Brijesh Bharadwaj (Ex-Head of Product Team)
• UpGrad — Shesh Vasudevamurthy (Adjunct Faculty)
• Razorpay — Vedanarayan Vedantham (SME and Startup Business Head)
• Accel — Sairam Krishnan (Marketer in Residence)
• Lenskart — Kumaar Brijesh (Lead - Performance)
• Gaana — Anil Siwach (Director - UX)
• Ajio — Zeenal Patel (AVP - Product)
• BigBasket — Tejas Vyas (VP, Head of Product)
• HBOMax — Arjun Nowhar (Country GM)
• Blume — Anirwan Chowdhury (VP - Investment team)

Speakers and Panelists

Over the years, Conquest has featured several prominent stakeholders in the Indian Ecosystem as speakers and panelists. A few of these include

• Nithin Kamath of Zerodha
• Sameer Nigam of PhonePe
• Ankur Warikoo
• Sanjay Nath, (Cofounder and Managing Director, Blume Ventures. Trivia: BITSian)
• Phanindra Sama (Cofounder, redBus. Also BITSian)
• Richa Kar (Cofounder and CEO, Zivame. BITSian?! Yes, Phanindra’s Batchmate)
• Shraddha Sharma (Founder and CEO, YourStory)
• Amit Agarwal (Founder and CEO, NoBroker)
• Barath Shankar (Partner, Accel)
• Aadit Palicha (Founder and CEO, Zepto)
• Dev Khare (Partner, Lightspeed Ventures)
• Dipti Tandon (Cofounder, Jeevansathi.com and Coffeemug.ai)
• Jitendra Kumar (Cofounder, Jupiter)
• Sujeet Kumar (Cofounder and COO, Udaan)
• Piyush Shah (Cofounder, InMobi & COO and President - Glance)
• Nilesh Kothari(Co-founder and MD, Trifecta Capital)

Registrations and Selection Process

• The Registration process for Conquest is broken down into two segments, the pre registration and the final registration. The Registration starts in early May, with the early bird reachout taking place before the launch. In the last edition, Conquest received <> pre registrations, and <> completed registrations.
• Both the Pan India and the BITSian track are sector agnostic. From the <> completed registrations, we shortlist the top 30 startups to take into the first phase of the program with the help of our evaluation partners. In the last edition, Applyifi was the evaluation partner which provided scores for all registered startups upon the following metrics:
  • Team
  • Market
  • Product
  • Strategy
  • USP
• Evaluation of our cohort also takes place while shortlisting the cohort for the second and third phase of the program. While the metrics remain the same, inputs from the mentors and participation during Conquest is also made a criteria during the later shortlisting stages. In the last edition, The Wadhwani Foundation, India Accelerator and VCats also provided scores for the cohort during the later shortlisting stages.
• On the Demo Day, in addition to the criteria mentioned above, the pitch is also taken into account by the jury to determine the winners.

The Accelerator Model

Conquest’s accelerator model runs in 2 main phases – Ignition (the 6-week long online accelerator) and Inflection (the week-long offline accelerator in Bangalore)

Ignition | Online Accelerator

Conquest’s online accelerator runs for 6 weeks, and focuses on giving our shortlisted startups access to a dedicated pool of resources, mentors, industry connects and insights from leading founders in the startup ecosystem to help them overcome their challenges and learn more about how to grow and scale their ventures. Throughout this phase, emphasis is laid on dedicated mentorship targeted at solving challenges specific to each startup, coaching to help them accelerate their journey to scale, and building a strong sense of community within the cohort. In order to do this, Conquest engages with its startups in the following ways:

1. Coaching Model: Each startup is assigned a coach that works closely with the founders and the Conquest team over the course of the online accelerator. Through weekly meets, the coaches provide general guidance to the founders, refine their pitches, and help them make the most out of the online accelerator program. The coaches also help the organizing team generate insights using the weekly reports of the startups so that the prominent roadblocks can be assessed and addressed
2. 1:1 Mentoring: Startups address their key challenges through these sessions with Conquest’s pool of mentors. Startups are allowed to choose mentors based on the specific problems that they aim to solve, and these mentors take hour-long one-on-one sessions with our founders to drive a personalized discussion and help the startup overcome their main obstacles to grow faster.
3. Weekly Pod Sessions: Founders are divided into smaller clusters called pods, and these pods serve as a way for founders within Conquest to interact and network with each other. These sessions are taken every week by members of the Conquest team along with founders, to help the cohort stay updated on the growth and progress of each startup. These sessions also serve as great icebreakers to promote networking within the cohort and build a great community of Conquest founders, with many founders being able to help each other out with their challenges either directly or through connections. This also allows the startups to maintain long-term relationships with their peers in the Conquest cohort, as well as the Conquest team itself.
4. Knowledge Sessions: A series of group sessions for the entire cohort that tackle the most relevant domains for all early-stage startups. These sessions are conducted by experts on these particular topics (founders and senior executives like CFOs, CBOs etc.) in order to give startups insights from someone who’s been immersed in that specific aspect of the ecosystem for a long time. Some examples are: session on hiring taken by TN Hari (CHRO of BigBasket)
5. Founder AMAs and Fireside Chats

Shortlisting from Ignition to Inflection

After the 6-week online accelerator, the startups deliver pitches in a competitive pitching session. The competitive pitching sessions are done with an experienced jury of angel investors and senior executives from VC firms, with 15-minute slots for each startup. In this session, the startups pitch their idea and business to the jury, followed by a short question-answer session. The jury scores the startups on the key metrics required to evaluate the startup. These are the same metrics that are used for evaluation during the Demo Day, so it serves as a good benchmark to help startups track their growth throughout the accelerator, as well as on the Demo Day. Based on the mock pitches, the top startups are shortlisted for the Inflection phase and given the opportunity to pitch at the Demo Day.

Inflection | Offline Accelerator

The offline accelerator is a week-long program where our shortlisted startups travel to Bangalore and live and work offline with the Conquest team. The offline week features dedicated coliving and coworking spaces for the cohort and the Conquest team to minimize the hassle and effort and ensure that founders can focus on extracting the maximum possible value from the accelerator. Last year, Conquest was based at the WeWork Prestige Central in Bangalore.

This week emphasizes networking both with external stakeholders and with the cohort itself, as well as perfecting startups’ pitches for the Demo Day. During this week, the Conquest team organizes various sessions, ranging from investment workshops by leading VC firms like Accel and WestBridge Capital (either at the Conquest coworking space or at the VC firm’s office), to knowledge sessions on key focus areas for early-stage startups, and various networking sessions and mixers to help startups and the Conquest team build a presence offline with our various stakeholders, as well as build stronger bonds within the cohort itself. These mixers often feature reps from our ecosystem partners, our sponsors, as well as other big names in the startup ecosystem such as Bangalore-based founders, Conquest alumni etc. and are a great way for startups to connect with some of the best names and organizations in Indian entrepreneurship. There are also mock pitching sessions with a jury of investors who help evaluate your pitch and provide you feedback to ensure you have the perfect pitch in place for the Demo Day.

Demo Day

• The Demo Day is the culmination of the entire accelerator program with the best startups in the cohort pitching to a jury consisting of some of India’s most prominent VCs, Angels, Founders, and mentors
• The Demo Day brings together the ecosystem’s top founders, investors, media leaders among others as speakers discussing the state of the ecosystem, the challenges and opportunities facing the entrepreneurs of our times in the form of panel discussions and keynote addresses
• With attendees ranging from founders, CXOs, VC analysts, influencers, etc. the Demo Day becomes a great platform for networking with these prominent figures of the ecosystem.

References

External links

• Official website