Hyderabad, March 12, 2019: TiE Hyderabad on Tuesday announced the start of a 3rd Edition of its globally acclaimed TiE Grad Business Idea Tournament for College Grads. This edition TiE aims to bring more cities and grad schools into the startup ecosystem by focussing on 3 core areas – access to money, markets & mentors to kick-start a business by taking their innovative ideas to next level. The selection process will be held between April – June 2019. Interested colleges can apply through www.hyderabad.tie.org
TiE also announced results of their 2nd Edition of TiE Grad Business Idea Tournament concluded on Saturday in City. In the finals 10 student startup ideas selected for the quality of their plans, had to do a One-minute Elevator pitch to a panel of investors, jury and in front of audience. A surprising element at this edition was the conduct of audience poll to select the winning team, in addition to the jury scores.
Over the last one year, 2600+ students from 16 colleges from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, took part in TiE Grad (Education to Entrepreneurship) program. The final winners emerged from about 119 teams mentored by 20 TiE Chartered members.
TiE Hyderabad gave away Rs. 7 Lakhs in prize money under 5 categories evaluated by an eminent jury panel.
Overall winners (Jointly Shared): Vinnan Labs team from BiTS Pilani, Hyderabad, for HOMA Robot to minimise hospital-acquired infections & Solar Power Plus team from Vishnu Institute of Technology, Bhimavaram – an automated solar panel cleaning technology.
Best 1 Minute elevator pitch: UtorAI from Vardhman College of Engineering, Hyderabad – for their chat bot building platform.
Best scalable business model for global markets: Symphony – a social networking platform on the lines of Instagram and Quora for music enthusiasts.
Best Innovative Idea: Lighthouse Tech team from Sreenidhi Institute of Science & Technologies, Hyderabad for their smart pill dispensing companion that facilitates scheduled medicinal needs of the elderly.
Best Presentation Skills: UtorAI for their business idea ‘Modular Open Source Chat Bots’ chat building platform.
This year TiE Grad introduced a panel of early stage investors to support these startups with access to money, markets & mentors. Five investors signed up to seed fund three of the teams to help them develop their product, market validations & set up business.
All Sports Extra from Vasavi College – a technology platform that unifies sports personnel and sports enthusiasts for training needs, and helps host flagship events, besides a performance tracking provision
Vinnan Labs from BiTS Hyderabad Campus, HOMA Robot Idea.
Symphony – Music sharing app, promises to reduce hospital acquired infections for patients
Addressing the media Suresh Reddy, TiE Hyderabad President, Chairman & Founder of Brightcom Group said “TiE is a solid platform whose core purpose is to enhance and spread entrepreneurship in the ecosystem around us. We do that though a voluntary club of Charter Members, who work in a two prong approach. One to mentor deserving startup companies, who are our Associate Members and two to seed the idea of entrepreneurship into the ecosystem.”
“TiE Hyderabad has many programs to guide budding entrepreneurs in fund raising, business planning to sales and marketing help that they need. Any startup founder who is looking to access global networks, mentoring or funding to scale their business to next levels, should enrol into TiE Hyderabad as an Associate Member.” Suresh added.
In the 3rd editionTiE Grad plans to onboard 25 colleges this year, train at least 5000+ students throughout the year, more importantly enable & empower the faculty to be more conversant with entrepreneurially oriented students and to inspire them to take the leap forward. This is the generation, that can make difference not only to themselves but also change the course of the future for our country and the whole world, TiE Hyderabad aims to give them the right direction and put them on the global platform from here.
“Education to entrepreneurship is the keystone to building a strong startup ecosystem. The 2nd edition attracted unprecedented 119 grad school entries, and in the 3rd Edition, we aim to outperform our target to add more colleges from different cities that will benefit more than 5000+ young students.” Subba Raju Pericherla, TiE Grad Program Chair, and TiE Hyderabad Board Member and Director of KLCP Holdings said.
“Each one of us was in awe of every taking part student team, who made exceptional presentations, showing their understanding of competition, challenges, market dynamics, and forecasting revenue targets.” Suresh added.
TiE Grad 2nd Edition BUSINESS IDEA Tournament Highlights: In the 2nd Edition, TiE Grad Business Idea Tournament, themed ‘Education to Entrepreneurship’ witnessed a broad spectrum of presentations ranging from e-commerce to mobile utility apps to devices, gadgets viz. Drones, Robotic arms and impacting sectors such as Emerging technologies, Med-tech, Ed-tech, Construction, Ag-tech, Energy/Cleantech, Sustainability solutions to name a few.
TiE Hyderabad initiatives provides graduating students the perfect opportunity to make an early mark and validate their business ideas. TiE Grad Challenges also give access to best-in-business mentors, including top investors which would be very hard to gain without being known.
Winners of TiE Business Competitions Programs will be nominated to global competitions, connect to investors, take away cash prizes and unlimited mentoring to build their ventures, find right connects to customers, global networks and access capital to grow and scale their business, all in one which makes TiE Grad Hyderabad the go-to program for student entrepreneurs in India.
At the TiE Grad 2nd Edition Presentation Ceremony held on Saturday Evening, Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary to Govt. of Telangana (IT E&C), Mr. Srini Raju, Founder Chairman of iLabs Group, and Nitin Rai, Chairman of TiE Global in their address lauded the TiE Grad Initiative and stated that it is a successful model that could be embraced across all TiE Chapters and Grad Schools. They also urged the participants to go out seek validation for their business ideas to make it scalable.
TiE Hyderabad this year also introduced OPEN-MIC. A weekend informal 5 minute business pitch platform for budding entrepreneurs to members and non-members of TiE Chapter to pitch their business ideas to prospective partners, mentors and investors.
