Blockchain firm XinFin and Thapar Inst. of Engineering and Technology brings The Startup Expo 3.0
Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, in association with Singapore based hybrid blockchain firm XinFin FinTech Pte. Ltd. organised “The Startup Expo 3.0” – a flagship event for budding entrepreneurs to help them succeed with their startup ideas. The Startup Expo 3.0 was organized to give a sound platform for emerging startups from different sectors like technical, manufacturing, e-commerce, healthcare, among other fields. The event saw more than 40 startups and finally 18 shortlisted startups pitched their ideas to the esteemed panel of investors and judges.
The Startup Expo 3.0 which is organized by the Entrepreneurship Development Cell, T.I.E.T at Patiala, also provides seed funding as well as incubation space to them in addition to any funding received from angel investors. Mr. Amit Kumar, V.P. of Quikr, while interacting with students and faculty, emphasised on technical innovations. He advised startups to do more research on their domain knowledge and better team work. His speech was so inspirational that he got a standing ovation from the audience. While concluding he appreciated the efforts made by ED Cell TIET, to nurture the potential of budding engineers.
Karan Bharadwaj, CTO of Singapore-based blockchain firm XinFin engaged with students across different sessions and provided insightful comments to enhance their startup ideas. He said, “We at XinFin are glad that we associated with Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology to equip students with the nuances of starting and scaling new businesses. The students had great enthusiasm and hunger to learn which really counts to make a difference in the start-up space.” XinFin even proceeded to hire a select few students from the college for their blockchain development team. He elaborated, “We deeply believe in young talent and their ability to disrupt and innovate; so we decided to hire a select number of students who can help us build our blockchain technology further and bring new innovation in the space.
The Startup Expo 3.0 saw the presence of several industry experts like Amit Kumar, VP - Quikr, Shveta Raina, Founder – Telerang, Reekrit Sarai, Co-Chair of CII, among others. Late in the evening, Dr. Maneek Kumar, dean student affairs, distributed the prizes and promised such more events and facilities in the near future. ‘Grand Dairy’ startup was adjudged as the best for First prize of Rs. 50,000 and ‘Wendor’ as the runner up. Dr. MD Singh, president ED Cell and Dr. Karun Verma, vice president ED Cell congratulated the winners and thank all the participants and team members.
Day-2, Feb 4th, 2018 The Pitchers
The ‘Pitchers’ was organised on 4th February aimed at first and second year students who currently do not have a running startup but want to gain knowledge about the startup world. Teams of 8 were allocated an established startup in which they had to enact the roles of major heads like CEO, COO, CMO etc. 20 such teams competed to win overall pitchers trophy along with best individual department head.
The event started with a panel discussion comprising of Ms. Shveta Raina (Founder, Talerang), Bikramjeet Waraich (CEO, HBeon Labs), Mr. Kunal Kumar (CEO, SomethingCool) and Mr. Sudhir Aggarwal (MD, VictoryOne). The engrossing discussion ranged from evaluating current startup environment in India to government initiatives. This was followed by a guest talk by Shveta Raina who informed the audience about her company’s ‘Future CEO’s program’.
For next one hour teams were given preparation time to finalize their presentations and pitches. This was followed by a guest lecture of Samar Singla, founder and CEO of Jugnoo Cabs. He touched on issues faced by entrepreneurs in Punjab and also the importance of sales in sustaining and growing an enterprise. Soon after lunch teams were divided into two groups. Best teams from both the groups then competed in a final shootout to be the overall winner. The event ended with declaration of results and thank you note by esteemed speakers.
Faculty members Dr. Ravi Kiran, Dr. Rajeev Mehta, Dr. Karminder Ghumman, Dr. Vineet Srivastava, Dr. Karamjit Singh Sandha and Dr. Vinay Kumar contributed through their mentoring and evaluation of participants.
Dr. MD Singh and Dr. Karun Verma expressed gratitude to all the speakers, sponsors, faculty members, guests, participants and team members of ED Cell for their unconditional support to make this event a big success. They promised that ED Cell will keep on encouraging the talented engineers in the field of entrepreneurship.
