We are happy to announce an Entrepreneurship Day on June 25th 2022 for the benefit of current students of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. The event is organized by the ECE department as part of its 75th anniversary, in association with ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park), Entrepreneurship and innovation IISc (EntIISc) club and the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) at IISc.
You must plan to participate at this event if you have an idea that can potentially chart your future. The event will feature PLENARY TALKS by industry leaders and incubation experts at SID and VC/angel investors followed by a Panel Discussion with these eminent experts, a PITCH SESSION where IDEATHON participants can present their ideas, and a START-UP CLINIC where participants can interact one-on-one with each of the experts to refine their ideas.
The primary motivation for this event is to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship among students of IISc. Join us on June 25th and indulge in these sessions specially designed to expand your horizons on various aspects of setting up a new start-up enterprise. REGISTER to submit your ideas by June 22, 2022, to win exciting prizes. Prizes will be distributed at a special session during SPCOM 2022 (July 11-15).
10:00 [Keynote Talk] Prof B Gurumoorthy, Chief Executive, SID-IISc: Entrepreneurship and Incubation Opportunities at SID
10:40 [Keynote Talk] Dr Aloknath De, Corporate Vice President & CTO Samsung R&D Institute India: Idea Worthiness for Patent-filing
11:00 PANEL DISCUSSION (see list of experts below)
12:15 PITCH by IDEATHON contestants
12:45 START-UP CLINIC
VENUE: MICROELECTRONICS & PHOTONICS AUDITORIUM (MP-20), ECE
Confirmed Panelists
Dr. Aloknath De is a Missionpreneur with a dream to make India an R&D Hub. He has served as the corporate vice president of Samsung Electronics and chief technology officer of Samsung R&D Institute India in Bangalore and is considered one of the “Most Influential CIO/CTOs of India. He is a recipient of the Alexander Graham Bell Prize in Canada. He has also received IETE Memorial Awards for distinguished contributions in Electronics and Communications, IDC Insights Award for Innovation in Telecom, and the Zinnov Intrapreneur of the Year award. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of IE, IETE, and Indian National Academy of Engg (INAE).
Dr. De promotes science and technology linkage through IP creation, startup collaboration, and innovative solutions. In addition to more than 30 years of industrial and research experience, including BEL, Nortel (Montreal), Hughes and with ST-Ericsson where he was country director, he served as a visiting professor with IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Delhi from 2005 to 2011. He holds a B.Tech. from IIT, Kharagpur, an M.E. from IISc, Bangalore, and a Ph.D. from McGill University, Montreal. He is an Adjunct Professor in the ECE department.
Mr. CS Murali is the Chairman of STEM Cell, SID (Society for Innovation and Development), at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He was earlier the Chief of Corporate Affairs at Cognizant Technology Solutions; Operating Partner at Connect Capital Ventures; Chief Operating Officer at HP Globalsoft; and President and CEO of LEC (India) Software Centre.
Prof. Dipanjan Gope, is an Associate Professor in Electrical Communication Engineering at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is also co-founder and CEO at Simyog Technology Pvt. Ltd. a spin-off from IISc focused on Design and Sign-off tools for Automotive Electronics. His research interests include computational electromagnetics with applications in signal integrity, power integrity, EMI for high-speed chip-package-systems, RF sensing for IoT applications, parallel programming for many-core and cloud infrastructures. Dr. Gope is a founding member at Nimbic (acquired by Mentor Graphics) where he served as Vice President, R&D from 2007-2011 and 2013-2014. Between 2005-2007, he was a Senior CAD engineer at Intel where he was a recipient of a divisional award for contributions towards providing signal integrity solution to Intel architecture platforms. Dr. Gope received his PhD and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle and BTech in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.
Mr. Naganand Doraswamy is a serial entrepreneur turned investor and is the Managing Partner & Founder at Ideaspring Capital. He founded Ideaspring Capital to fund and actively support product innovation start-ups. He enjoys working with entrepreneurs who have the vision and passion to build products for the global markets. Naganand is very well networked and respected in the start-up ecosystem and he actively participates in various organizations focusing on Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Naganand has co-authored a book on “IPSec” published by Prentice Hall.
Mr. Neeraj Tyagi is an Entrepreneur & Angel Investor who has invested in more than 30 startups. He is the CEO of We Founders Circle, a global community of successful founders & strategic angels, which offers seed capital, business & networking support to early-stage entrepreneurs. He worked as the Managing Partner at Venture Catalysts, India’s leading angel investor network, which is featured #7 in top 10 global early stage investor by Crunchbase and have fundraised over $150M for 100+ startups till now. He has handled content campaigns for both startups & large enterprises like Microsoft, Google, Network 18, Whirlpool to name a few and has exposure across media platforms including TV, Advertising & Web. He loves working with entrepreneurs & is open to collaborations.
Mr. Umakant Soni is the co-founder and CEO of ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park). He is a nominated expert from India’s side for Innovation and Commercialization working group, Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) and is the Chairman of AI Foundry. He Co-founded India’s first AI fund (pi Ventures, $32mn) and backed some of best AI companies in India (Sigtuple, Niramai & others).
He is also the CEO & Co-founder of AI BOT startup Vimagino (2009). Strategy For Advanced Technology, Innovation Arm @Wipro; Digital Strategy for LUNAR (Acquired by McKinsey); Former Director India@Science Inc., Strategy and Innovation for Wipro (Built BPO automation platform Base).
Mr. Raj Waghray is head of the Entrepreneurship Cell at SID. He is also author of Gita in My Homework and The After-taste of Transcendence. He was the Founder of 16Petals.com, AVP at Collabera, and Senior Manager – Technology Consulting Group at Cognizant Technology Solutions. He is a graduate of Birla Institute of Technology (Mesra) and Osmania University.
Dr. Vinay Kumar Chauhan is an Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore alumnus with Ph.D. in Nano Science and Engineering. Bio-sensing technologies invented by Vinay are at the heart of PathShodh Healthcare. It has been Vinay’s motto to ease the burden of people suffering from chronic diseases and serve the society. He is currently serving as the CEO of PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru. His focus has been to invent out of the box solutions based on deep scientific exploration and translating scientific innovations to products and serve the population at large. His research has resulted in multiple patents and novel technologies for diagnosis of various disease markers. Vinay has many research publications and patents to his credit. His current research interests include the novel biosensing technologies for point of care applications. He is the recipient of MIT Technology Review TR35 award, INAE Entrepreneur award, Anjani Mashelkar Inclusive Innovation Award, IISc best PhD thesis award. Under his leadership PathShodh has also received FICCI Healthcare award, CII Grand jury award for best Innovation, Titan Tata Trusts Design Impact award for social change.
“When you find an idea that you just can’t stop thinking about, that’s probably a good one to pursue.” –Josh James
IDEATHON is a pitching competition open to all under-graduate and post-graduate students who are presently enrolled with any department of IISc, with the aim of stimulating the spirit of entrepreneurship. We invite the budding entrepreneur in you to pitch business plans and ideas to a jury consisting of entrepreneurs, innovators, business professionals and academicians. The idea can either be a fresh tech-innovation or an improvement over an existing product, solution or service. Each team will be given 5 minutes to pitch in front of the jury and the peer audience. The jury will evaluate the pitches and select the winners who will be eligible for an attractive prize money as well as mentoring support from SID and EntIISc.
Your proposals should clearly explain the value proposition of your idea including who your customers are and how your concept meets their needs. Shortlisted proposals will be chosen to present in person at the Entrepreneurship Day on 25 June, 2022.
We are inviting students of IISc (all programs/departments) with the an interest on entrepreneurship to join us for this exciting start-up Pitch Competition! REGISTER to submit your ideas by June 22, 2022.
In this form a set of questions are included to help you organize your idea better. In addition to answering these questions, you must prepare answer in the form of a ppt file and upload this. This deck will also be useful for presenting your idea during the event.
We invite you to join our panelists for a stimulating conversation!!
“It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.” -Scott Belsky
We bring to you Start-up Clinic, which is meant to provide you with an opportunity to interact face-to-face with panelists in specially set up individual offices. The session aims at providing you an opportunity to network with these industry leaders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors in areas of mutual concern. This Clinic is specially designed to assist you in expanding your imaginations towards a successful business, as well as to provide guidance on promotion, crisis management, and most importantly, on how to obtain funding for your own business in future.
Have a Question??
Please see below!!
Why are you organizing IDEATHON@ECE75 Entrepreneurship Day?
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the department, the ECE department is partnering with ARTPARK (AI& Robotics Technology Park), EntIISc, and SID-IISc to engage with innovators such as you and help you familiarize with the jargons of startup ecosystem, and acquire the necessary expertise to refine your ideas and develop your investor pitches. The event is planned to encourage innovation among IISc students thereby contribute towards the emerging Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Who can submit an entry for IDEATHON
Any current student of IISc can submit an entry by filling a simple form.
What are you looking for in the IDEATHON entry?
We are interested to know what societally relevant problem are you trying to solve and how. We strongly encourage you to be clear and concise to explain how well you understand the problem, and what makes your team stand out.
Is the uniqueness of the idea important?
Absolutely NO. We are interested more in your approach to solving a problem and are open to teams who are trying to solve a known problem differently.
Should the entry be restricted to Electronics and Communication ?
No. We are open to any idea that is remotely connected to electronics and communications technologies. These may have applications in diverse domains such as strategic, aerospace, biomedical, agriculture, energy or environment, to list a few. However, it may not be fair to expect experts at the event will have technical expertise in all these areas.
Can we include links with our application?
Sure. Links to videos or demo websites are welcome.
Are there any registration/course fees?
No. Application is free of cost.
I am student of IISc but I have already initiated a startup earlier. Should I apply?
You may submit a new idea at IDEATHON.
If selected, what can I expect in terms of help for my team or startup?
If your team is selected, we offer a chance to connect with experienced professionals in the Indian/IISc-SID entrepreneurial ecosystem. The event will help you refine your business proposition and sharpen your investor pitches. We are sure this will enhance the possibility of success when you decide to take the dive. However, we do NOT guarantee any funding.
What is my time commitment for IDEATHON?
The Entrepreneurship Day will be held on June 25, 2022. You are expected to attend the full duration of the event in person. During the event you will be invited to deliver your pitch to a jury. We expect that, you will work on refining your pitches in your own time to compete effectively against your peers in other competitions in future.
We have more than one idea. Can we submit more than one application?
No. Each team may submit only their best idea.
We have a great idea but are not technical. Can we still apply?
Of course! But we do look for how well your team’s qualifications fit your idea.
I have question. Who will answer this?
Please write to ideathon@iisc.ac.in. We will try to answer as early as possible.
Event Organized in Partnership with
The EntIISc club is Entrepreneurship and Innovation club of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. We focus on developing Entrepreneurial ecosystem and to bring students closer to the start-up culture. We aspire to achieve our goals by bringing chief players in the Entrepreneurial ecosystem to conduct talks, seminars, webinars and pitch events. In the past 5 years, we have provided traction to 10 start-ups to take off the runway.
Society for Innovation and Development (SID) is a Society founded by the Indian Institute of Science in 1997 to promote collaboration with the Industry. One of SID’s objective is to incubate startups that are rooted in deep science across a variety of business domains. SID has over the years incubated several startups and runs a world class incubation center housed within IISc.
Please visit for more information about SID.
ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park) is a one-of-its-kind, not-for-profit (section-8) foundation promoted by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru with support from AI Foundry in a public-private collaborative model, to promote technology innovations in AI & Robotics. The vision of ARTPARK is to create a better world with inclusive and equitable access to AI & Robotics via Open Tools, Databanks, Standards, IP, Technologies, and path-breaking companies.