IIIT- Entrepreneurship Cell hosts ‘E-Summit 2021’

Central Chronicle News
Raipur, Mar 19: International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Naya Raipur hosted a 2-Day Annual ‘Entrepreneurship Summit’ on March 19-20, 2021, with an aim to create entrepreneurial mindset amongst students and motivate them to take the entrepreneurship road, less taken. The theme of the event is ‘Dare to Begin’. Entrepreneurship in Central India is still in its nascent stages and there is a lot of potential that can be tapped. To bridge this gap, IIIT-NR Entrepreneurship Cell decided to organize this Summit, which is Chhattisgarh’s largest college-level virtual entrepreneurship conference.
This edition of the annual event is being held entirely online and will feature keynote lectures, panel discussions, fireside chat, student challenges such as IPL Auction, Biz Quiz, CXO Challenge, etc. More than 550 participants have registered for IPL Auction, while around 850 registrations have been recorded for the Biz Quiz competition. In addition to this, more than 90 people have registered for the CXO Challenge. The Summit is set to attract more than 1000 attendees. Speaking in the inaugural session, Dr.Rajarshi Mahapatra, Dean (Academics), IIIT Naya Raipur, said, “The online E-Summit 2021 will provide an avenue to a wide audience which includes aspiring student entrepreneurs, start-ups, alumni and investors, to form a network and share their knowledge and experience”.
Chief-Guest for the event Mr. N. P. Desai, a veteran entrepreneur, with 39 years of experience, presented his view on opportunities lying for engineering students in MSME sector, particularly with respect to technology. He opined that there is a big untapped market, particularly in the form of incentives, such as PLI schemes and Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives by the Government.
Elaborating on the unique aspects of E-Summit 2021, Dr P.P. Paltani, Dean (Research & Development), IIIT-NR, stressed upon innovation and technology as the only way available to solve the complex and wicked problems that the world is facing now. He further equated the IIIT Naya Raipur journey with that of a start-up and enumerated that “Like any start-up, we also faced numerous challenges and adversaries. However,with every challenge there arises opportunity for innovation, which has helped us to make a distinct position for us in a very short time”.
The aim of E-Summit is to help students explore new realms, and unleash the entrepreneur inside them. The audience ranges from graduate students of engineering and management discipline to corporate entries.
First day of the event featured eminent speakers like Dr. Aniruddha Malpani (Founder, Malpani Ventures), Mr. Gautham Sivaramakrishnan (Program Lead – VC & Private Equity Ecosystem, Microsoft), Mr. Aman Dhattarwal (Youtuber), who presented their views on finding investors, launching start-up’s, and establishing corporate start-up synergies. The second half of the first day was totally dedicated to the IPL Auctions, which was a student team event, where the teams had to display their skills to convert assets into cash. To showcase Chhattisgarh as a startup destination for young entrepreneurs, E-Summit also organised a panel discussion on the advantages of starting a business in Tier II cities. The panellists included Harshit Agrawal (CEO – Smilebots), Manish Agrawal (CEO – Techment Technology), Pranjal Kamra (CEO – Finology Ventures), and DivyaPritwani (CEO, AIC@MUJ).
The second day of the event will feature keynote lectures from Dr. Aloknath De (CTO, Samsung India), Mr. Saurabh Jain (Ex-VP, Paytm), Mr. Shashank Mehta (GM/Head, RazorpayX), Suhas Motwani (Chief Intern in Residence -The Product Folks), Mr. Jeevan Gopisetty, (CEO-NEMO), Ms. Shivangi Srivastava (GM, Swiggy), Mr. Ajinkya Kulkarni (Founder, GrowFix) and Standup Comedy evening by Mr. Rahul Dua.
At the end of the first day, Dr. Amit Agrawal, Faculty In-charge- E-Cell presented the vote of thanks to all the eminent speakers, entrepreneurs, faculty members, students, and participants. Dr. Agrawal highlighted on the opportunities that the students have even in this pandemic time and encouraged the students to identify these opportunities and take the path of entrepreneurship.