Well..!!! This has come as a fortunate news to all the startup aspirants to hit their ideas on the floor. The 21st Wharton India Economic Forum popularly known as WIEF has announced that it is going to host the Wharton India Startup Competition. And this host play is going to be their fourth year on the board.
WIEF is basically a very prestigious business conference, which strives to bring together a variety of aspirants from a variety of niches like professionals, academics, political leaders, an individual etc and this wide scopic conference is hosted with the motto of sharpening and shaping the current business landscape in the country. The WIEF hosted by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
The WIEF is normally attended by numerous people from around the country and not only that, the WIEF features the ideas of prominent and knowledgeable speakers who project their views on business development and economic growth of the country. This startup landscape is an eye candy to extensive media and business community.
WIEF 2017- Highlights..!!
To support the emerging and aspiring entrepreneurs on a global scale, the Wharton India Startup Competition (WISC) is going to be conducted in India.
The WIEF this year is likely to attract 300 plus attendees from a variety of niches like top B- school alumni and professionals, Wharton Professors, students from Penn and much more. With that, it is also said that the WIEF will experience the presence of leading entrepreneurs and industrialist playing the role of the judge, the audience and also as a panelist.
WIEF is expected to strike discussion on the economy, business ventures, and development and capture amazing synergies and projects from the well- being of India. This conference would provide a good platform, network and opportunity to numerous aspirants.
The winners get a chance to get tie- up with legal firms and VCs in the country. With that, it also helps startup yo easily reach college, VCs, incubators, and accelerators.
CRITERIA:
For Eligibility:
The startups on Early stage, Pre- seed and Seed stage model with any of the business ideas for the development and progress of the Indian market are eligible to apply for the event.
Some of the eligibility criteria imply:
• The concerned startup is required to be in the product development stage.
• Should have a good and collected data on customer validation.
• The attendee should not have exceeded $1 Mn in annual revenue or $1 Mn in equity-based investment.
So, with this criteria the attendee is required to fill in the prescribed online application form. Along with that the attendee is also required to pin in a one- page resume in a PDF format.
For Selection:
The selection from the entries would be done by the panel with includes experts like entrepreneurs, VCs, industrialist etc. They would select and short- list the semi- finalist from the pool of attendee’s. The selected aspirants would then be provided with an ample opportunity to project their ideas in front of the judges.
The finalist would undergo a presentation and a Q&A session in front of the panel on January 6, 2017. And,then the winners would present their start-up at the WIFE in March 2017.
Not stopping with that, the winner or the winning team would be awarded with a prize money of $25K accompanied with a funding mentorship.
For your little information:
The panel of judges at the earlier conference included Alok Kejriwal (Mumbai Angels), Kirthiga Reddy (Facebook) and Ravi Gururaj (Nasscom). According to the sources about 750 applications were received and the winning team was awarded $10K.
The list of eminent speakers included Harsh Mariwala (Chairman of Marico), Ronnie Screwvala (founder of UTV group and Unilazer), Haigreve Khaitan (Senior Partner at Khaitan & Co.)