The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay
AbbreviationE-Cell, IITB
Founded1998 (1998)
Founded atIIT Bombay
TypeNon-profit organization
Legal statusActive
FocusEntrepreneurship
HeadquartersStudent Activity Center
IIT Bombay
Location
  • Mumbai, India
Area served
India and overseas
Members
200+ Students from IIT Bombay
Key people
Bhuvan Gowda
(Overall Head)
Saarthak Mittal
(Overall Head)
Websiteecell.in

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay, also known as E-Cell, IIT Bombay, is the primary entrepreneurship promoting body of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, managed and run completely by the students of the institute. It organizes initiatives like the annual business plan competition Eureka! and the flagship event, The Entrepreneurship Summit (E-Summit) in January each year, which receives a footfall of over 30,000 people who include students, investors, corporates, mentors, celebrities and the most important; Entrepreneurs.[1]

History

In October 1998, The Entrepreneurship Cell was formed by the students of IIT Bombay with the mission of promoting the culture of entrepreneurship within the campus of IIT Bombay. E-Cell IIT Bombay was one of the founding members of the National Entrepreneurship Network.

In 1999, 'Right Half', the first campus startup of IIT Bombay and any engineering institute in India was founded by Kashyap Deorah (B.Tech, CSE, Batch of 2000) along with two of his batchmates in their final year.

In 2000, business incubator SINE was inaugurated by Mr. Nandan Nilekani (Founder & Ex-CEO, Infosys) and Mr. Kanwal Rekhi (Venture Capitalist & Director, TiE). The incubator jump starts with 8 startups in the year.

In 2008, E-Cell, IIT Bombay represented India and the Indian sub-continent at the `Global Conference of E-Cells’ organized by Massachusetts Institute of Technology at Madrid, Spain in April 2008.

In 2010, 1985 batch of IIT-B decides to support Eureka.

In 2011, E-Cell officially collaborated with E-Bootcamp organized by BASES (Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students), Stanford University for Eureka!

In 2012, E-Cell, IIT-Bombay collaborated with Harvard US-India Initiative (HUH) to conduct an international conference on Entrepreneurship and Innovation. E-Summit witnessed huge participation from youth across India.

In 2013, E-Summit became the 1st entrepreneurship promoting event to conferred with UNESCO patronage. E-Cell spearheaded the formation of Entrepreneurship Centre of the Institute which was launched at E-Summit 2014. National Entrepreneurship Challenge initiated by E-Cell IITB reaches out to 150 colleges, leading to the creation of more than 50 E-Cells in the country.

In 2014, the first edition of The Ten Minute Million Challenge (TTMM) was held. The competition provided on-spot funding to its participants. The first edition was a huge success with 6 out of 10 participants receiving funding from investors.

In 2015, FCoF, a platform to connect startups to freelancers and their potential co-founders was launched. Alongside, Startup Services Platform (SSP) was launched to provide legal and financial consultancies to startups at minimal rates. E-Summit was provided patronage from GoI's flagship initiative Make in India. E-Summit saw the edition of two new events, Business Conclave and Innovation Conclave.

In 2016, E-Cell IITB launched Enlighten, an initiative that provided all the relevant information regarding entrepreneurship. Eureka! received 8884 entries, highest since its inception.

In 2017, Swacch and EnTech were initiated. Swacch was a social campaign that encouraged the people of Mumbai to keep the public spaces clean. EnTech envisioned to support and increase the technology startups from IIT Bombay.

In 2018, Pre-Summit, an initiative aimed at promoting the E-Summit was launched. Pre-Summit reached out to a large number of people and turned out to be a huge success. Alongside, the face of E-Cell, consisting of its logo design was completely revamped, celebrating 20 years of E-Cell.

In 2019, E-Summit was showcased on the Nasdaq Tower, Times Square for the first time ever. E-Summit also saw the addition of three new events, RnD Conclave and Content Creation Conclave and Seed Stars.

In 2020, E-Summit is taken completely online in order to adapt with the pandemic.

The Entrepreneurship Summit

The Entrepreneurship Summit is the annual flagship event of E-Cell IIT Bombay. The summit also showcases the latest global trends in entrepreneurship. Held on 28 and 29 January 2023, with the theme of “A Trailblazing Realm”, the E-Summit witnessed speaker sessions from Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Byju Raveendran, Kunal Shah, Aman Gupta and others. The event was held in a hybrid mode, where a few events like The Ten Minute Million and Networking Arena were conducted offline and others were held online using a platform created by our own team.

E-Summit in the past has been a host to personalities like Ritesh Agarwal, Travis Kalanick, Indra Nooyi, Bhavish Aggarwal, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Divyank Turakhia, Amitabh Kant, Mr. Kanwal Rekhi, Muhammad Yunus, Nandan Nilekani, Tulsi Tanti, Adi Godrej, S Ramadorai, Ronnie Screwvala, Subhash Chandra, Kishore Biyani, Ajit Balakrishnan, Jim Beach amongst others.[2]

National Entrepreneurship Challenge

The National Entrepreneurship Challenge was launched in July, 2013 to help colleges across India establish their own Entrepreneurship Cell. The competition is designed and structured so as to help the participants step by step which would ultimately lead to formulation of their own E-Cell. The participants have to do a series of tasks to spread entrepreneurial awareness and help the startups in their campus.[3]

Panel Discussions

Panel discussion on latest topics like silicon valley and Indian ecosystem, social entrepreneurship, job v/s entrepreneurship and latest trends in entrepreneurship take place.

Startup Expo

Startup expo invites most innovative startups from across the country. The startups reach out to thousands of its potential customers and network with potential investors. It gives the attendees an opportunity to learn form the success stories of these enterprises.

Mentor's Meet

The semi-finalists receive extensive support to improve their B-plans. Each team submits its initial draft of their B-plan online which is then assigned a mentor, specific to its field, to help them formalize the final business plan. Taking the mentoring process one step further, a workshop as well as a meeting with a panel of distinguished mentors consisting of investors, venture capitalists and experts in various fields is held in December and semi-finalists are given mentoring on Finance, Marketing, Business Plan and Pitching.

Workshops

  • Pre-Eureka Workshop- The extensive B-Plan making workshop held every year in August and September.
  • Venture IOT workshop - 2 day workshop to help entrepreneurs and innovators learn the concepts of IOT to apply in real world
  • Fast Track Course on Entrepreneurship which covers Basics of Entrepreneurship, Idea generation, Business Modelling, Marketing, Finance, Funding & Pitching
  • Webpreneurship - a 2-day workshop to teach the ways of utilising the web a s an entrepreneurship platform
  • EnVoyage - a series of free Workshops is held across various cities of India during December and January. In the workshops the attendees are made aware about entrepreneurship by the means of speaker sessions and interactive games.
  • Lean Entrepreneurship Workshop - workshop on Lean Startup

Competitions

  • I_Hack - a 48-hour hackathon organised during the E-Summit where developers create a product prototype for cash prizes and incubation opportunities.
  • IPL Auction - a Strategy bidding competition on Cricket Player in which participants build a Squad of players with the highest rating.
  • Get set Pitch - A On-spot Pitching event in which participants pitch in front of investors and audience in turn Audience make a portfolio of ideas pitched.
  • Bid and Build - A On-spot bidding competition where participants form a team of board members which will best suit the given problem statement.
  • Boardroom - A competition which puts the participants in the shoes of board members and present their opinions on a given problem statement.
  • Money Heist - A competition where the participants are given a certain amount of resources, and are required to take decisions on various situations and maximize resources.
  • Ace the case - A case study based competition where the participants have to analyse and provide solutions to the case study given to them.

Entrepreneurship and Business Club (EnB Club, IITB)

The Entrepreneurship and Business Club (EnB Club) is a community where innovative ideas are born and nurtured into successful business ventures. EnB Club seeks to take on the myriad challenges that the new economy is facing and translate them into opportunities that can be commercialized while keeping it all simple, fun and engaging. In this way, EnB Club tries to inculcate entrepreneurial spirit in students.[4]

Speaker Sessions

Several Talks are conducted round the year spanning different sectors from basic to advance. Sessions on introduction to entrepreneurship, school to startup, social media marketing, idea generation, e-commerce, common mistakes the startups make, funding for startups, legal and Intellectual Property issues are some specifics amongst others.

Competitions

  • Wolf of Wall Street -The event held for freshmen aims at making participants aware about the working of Stock Market by hands on activities.
  • EnB Buzz - An business idea competition conducted for freshmen
  • Competencia de Pitcheo - Instant Problem-Solving cum Business Model Competition aimed at the IITB community.

Startup Bootcamp

The Startup Bootcamp is a 10-week-long program, during which ideas are made startup worthy with the help of an efficient team building exercise as well as extensive mentoring. The selected startups are also offered incubation in SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), IIT Bombay

Initiatives

Desai Sethi School for Entrepreneurship

IIT Bombay established an Entrepreneurship Centre at its premises, with a generous funding received from Mr. Bharat Desai and Ms. Neerja Sethi, under the aegis of The Desai Sethi Family Foundation. Initially named as Desai Sethi Centre for Entrepreneurship, it fosters entrepreneurship and technology innovation through relevant courses, laboratories and partnerships. Students in the programme receive instruction and mentorship from IIT Bombay faculty as well as distinguished guest faculty from leading international institutions and industry. The establishment of the Centre was announced by the Director of IIT Bombay during the inaugural session of Entrepreneurship Summit (E-Summit 2014), which was organized by the Entrepreneurship Cell of the Institute on 1–2 February 2014.[5] Five years later, in December 2019, the Centre was renamed as Desai Sethi School for Entrepreneurship.

Deferred Placement Policy

With the start-up ecosystem of the institute flourishing and students being keener on taking up entrepreneurial challenges, the Placement Cell has played its part by announcing the introduction of the DPP(Deferred Placement Policy). This policy aims to encourage students who're looking to work on their own start-up idea by safeguarding them against the risk of having to forgo campus placements. According to this initiative, students interested in pursuing an entrepreneurial activity would be given an option to defer their placements by 2 years. The need for a DPP(Deferred Placement Policy) was envisaged due to the current trend of rising interest in entrepreneurship, partly owing to the success of The Entrepreneurship Cell's efforts in fostering an entrepreneurial culture within and outside the institute.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "IIT Bombay Student, YouTuber Eknoor Singh shares journey from cracking IIT JEE to life at IITs [Excl.]". Retrieved 11 May 2022.
  2. ↑ "E-Summit 2021".
  3. ↑ "NEC | E-Cell IIT Bombay".
  4. ↑ "EnB Club".
  5. ↑ "Desai Sethi Centre for Entrepreneurship |". www.iitb.ac.in. Archived from the original on 27 December 2016.
  6. ↑ "IIT Bombay: Only 15 IIT-Bombay students opt out of career race for studies, 1 to start venture | Mumbai News - Times of India". The Times of India.
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