Business Plan Competition
As part of the subject Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management, which is offered to the second year students of the Institute in the Spring Semester, students, in teams of twos and threes, submitted their Business Plans for opening start-ups. Altogether there were 21 Business Plans. Some of the products/services covered in the Business Plans were the following: Air Bottle, Drone Delivery, Free Long-Distance Calls, Labour Contractor, Fan Speed Controller, Motor-attached Bicycles, Smart E-Paper Display, Image-to-audio Interface (Accessories for Blind Persons), Sign Language-to-Word Automatic Translator, e-Business Card, MandApp, Portable Solar Oven, Recycle Plastics, Travel Information Sharing, and Travel Aggregator.
Each team made a presentation before Professor Pratap K J Mohapatra, the subject teacher, and Dr. Ankur Gupta. Five Business Plans were shortlisted on the basis of three criteria: Novelty, Practicality, and Completeness. The five shortlisted teams made the final presentation before a panel consisting of Dr. Akhilesh Barve and Dr. Ankur Gupta, who adjudged the following three award-winning teams:
First Prize Winners:
| Zaman Istiyak and Krishnan R. | Paperless – The Smart E-Paper Display |
Joint Second Prize Winners:
| Gopi Sumanth and Surya Lingam Blue | Light – Image-to-audio Interface |
| Punith R. and K. Akash Deepak Sign | Language-to-Word Automatic Translator |
The prizes were distributed by Professor S. N. Panigrahi (the Head of the School of Mechanical Sciences), Mr. Jagatananda Mohapatra (a first-generation entrepreneur of Odisha), and Dr. Akhilesh Barve.
Mr. Jagatananda Mohapatra, who had earlier given a guest lecture in the class and who had permitted the students to visit his oxygen-manufacturing plant at the Mancheswar Industrial Estate in this semester, had donated Rs. 10,000.00 (out of a total prize money of Rs 15,000) towards the prizes.