What we do?
For nurturing their talent E-CELL conducts various workshops to students, which range from Idea Generation to setting up of a venture (associated with organizations like, BITSAA International, Non-Governmental Organizations). Apart from this, E-CELL organizes lectures of successful entrepreneurs from various fields to inspire the students. E-CELL has some on-campus start-ups to its credit like Trippin unlimited, Valonia, College Dhanda, Inc42, Gadgetronica, LTGTR. In the process of talent hunt, E-CELL conducts various competitions like BITS Business Quiz, Ground Reality on an annual basis.
Events conducted:
LAUNCHPAD EVENTS (E-Summit January 2018)
Ground Reality:
It takes more than a good idea to be an entrepreneur. An unwavering passion, open-mindedness, daring, indomitability, spunk and persistence are a few qualities that distinguish a successful entrepreneur.
Ground reality is the annual start-up challenge and entrepreneurship conclave organized by E-CELL - BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus, to promote innovative start-ups within and outside the campus. The event is targeted to encourage entrepreneurship and bridge the gap between market, industry and students, to bring entrepreneurs to the forefront of the masses.
It not only provides prizes to participants in form of Cash and Goodies but also gives them a chance to pitch their ideas to renowned venture capitalists and angel investors. The start-ups are given complete freedom to negotiate the terms of funding and if both the parties agree, E-CELL helps them to sign a contract for the same. This provides a chance for many of the budding entrepreneurs to receive funding and/or being incubated.
Previous Participations: More than 150 start-up ideas.
The same competition is also organised separately under social category known as Ground Reality Beyond Profits.
Vikas Soch:
It is an Ideation competition wherein teams are required to put forth a model to deal with social issues in a sustainable and innovative manner. This is a model based competition so general idea is rejected.
We are searching for innovative and self-sustaining ideas. Vikas Soch provides a platform for socialist thinkers and social workers to showcase their models for the upliftment and well-being of the socially backward and deprived.
ATMOS EVENTS (October 27th-29th)
SUIT UP is a game that puts you at the beginning of your start-up. Participants are given details about the idea after which they have to work around real life problems to make it successful. Hiring people, marketing, trading, and bidding are some of the concepts used and grounds upon which people are tested.
Previous Year’s Participation: 250 people wished to participate, though game was conducted for 125 of them due to space availability.
Manager’s Dilemma replicates real life situation of managers in enterprises. It tests the skills of a participant on the terms of decision making nerve and case study of the enterprise. Making the right decision at the right time keeping in mind the past and future scenarios of an enterprise is what one learns from the event.
Usual Participation: 100+
APPCONNECT is an online event which requires you to submit an app idea. It is not about building one, just brainstorming about a new idea. Ideas judged on the grounds of creativeness, innovation, applications and feasibility. Prizes won just for idea submission makes the event quite popular round the nation.
Previous Year Submissions: 66 ideas submitted and judged from.
Managing Temptations is an event to provide a chance to students to work on their selling skills. Teams of 3/4 get together and have to run the restaurant inside the college for an hour and maximize profits.
Participation: 50+ people
PROJECTS (Year Round Activities)
Coffee with CEL:
Coffee with CEL is a pioneer project of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership. It is a talk show wherein E-Cell members interview high profile Industrialists, Start-Up Founders, Venture Capitalists, Angel Investors and other influential people who can guide, mentor and train the students of BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus in their endeavour to build a start-up. It’s about business ideas, funding, opportunities, putting together teams, starting up, failing and then bouncing back from failures to achieve the ultimate success. It’s the Entrepreneurs’ “reality show”.
Tech to Startup:
In recent years, tech startups have become one of the top venture capital investment choices. E-Cell provides the existing technical projects on campus a base to build into a start-up and bring them investors in order to promote their idea as well as foster technical and entrepreneurial skills among the students on campus.
Collaboration with various associations/clubs :
E-Cell aims to collaborate with various technical associations and/or clubs on campus in order to provide a 15-20 day course outline which consists of all the basic skills that an entrepreneur requires and must polish to succeed.
Operation LaunchPad :
To achieve the goals and attain the targets set, E-Cell will conduct Operation LaunchPad, a precursor to LaunchPad’18, which will consist of a number of talks and workshops to teach others and inculcate the same enthusiasm that we share.
TEDxBITSHyderabad (November 2017)
The first edition of the same was conducted successfully with the theme – “At the Heart of Innovation” in November 2012. Some of the speakers were –
• Satyabrata Dam
• Shekhinah Shawn
• John Louis
• Orlando Bernett
TEDxBITSHyderabad chapter was organized for the second time by the team at E-CELL during September 2014. TEDx theme of the year was – “Of The Goodness of Life”. Some of the speakers in the lineup consisted of –
• Upasana Makati
• Sey Min
• Gitanjali Sarangan
• Mani Shankar
• Babar Ali
• Vicky Roy
The third edition of TEDxBITSHyderabad was organized on November 13, 2016. The theme of the year was “Dream. Think. Evolve.” and a series of speakers with amazing profiles to do justification with the theme in various fields –
• Tanmay Shah
• Nishchal Narayanam
• Hemanth Satyanarayan
• Pulkit Gaur
• Kapur Mal Jain
• Dr. Neharika Yadav
• Madhavi Adimulum
• Anuradha Thakur
• Sunil Shastri
• Krishna Kodali
We soon plan to come up with the next edition of TEDxBITSHyderabad in 2017 – bigger and better than ever.
E-Cell Connect
E-Cell Connect is an initiative by Entrepreneurship Cell, BITS PILANI Hyderabad Campus. There are various engineering and management colleges in India notable being IIT, IIM, BITS and NIT. All of these colleges have independent Entrepreneurship Cells working to support entrepreneurship in respective colleges through various events like business plan competitions, lecture sessions etc. But they have a limit to the target audience they can reach because of the funds and manpower.
E-Cell Connect is a way to tackle this problem. If all the E-Cells are connected with each other and help others in their events and other initiatives in individual capacities, it will be make a difference in terms of people reached and the network created will be helpful for all the E-Cells.
An Institute of Eminence
