Conquest is an international business plan competition organised by Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL), 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. With prizes worth more than INR 3,00,000 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 2010 promises its participants a highly challenging and rewarding experience.
Tie ups with Department of Science and Technology(Government of India) 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.
Roll-out Plan:
Conquest 2010 will roll out in four stages. The first stage is the executive summary submission round. The 25 shortlisted teams submit their business plans in the second stage. Mentoring on business/technological, legal and financial fronts constitutes the third stage. The fourth stage is the Grande Finale at BITS-Pilani campus during August.
The executive summaries have to be submitted to conquest@celbits.org
The last date for submission is 17th April 2010.
Official website: http://www.celbits.org/conquest