India has emerged as a powerful developing economy over the last 70 years. However, it continues to face some of the trickiest development challenges that will require the combined youth, entrepreneurship and innovators to develop sustainable solutions. To bridge the gap and take India to the next level, the need of the hour is to come up with innovative solutions to the various socio-economic challenges thereby impacting lives of people at large. Government of India is actively encouraging Entrepreneurship development and is working closely with key stakeholders in the eco-system to develop multi pronged strategies to energies youth to take entrepreneurship as their preferred choice through innovative programmes like Start-up India and Stand up India. Smart Fifty is probably the biggest StartUp Hunt in India. It is an initiative aligned with the country’s focused approach to promote entrepreneurship driven social development.
IIM Calcutta Innovation Park, a not-for-profit entity, in association with the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, has launched a joint initiative to encourage entrepreneurship-driven social development. Smart Fifty – 50 solutions to transform India (http://www.smartfifty.com/) is a televised contest to discover and reward 50 smart ideas across targeted sectors that can help transform India through the creation of wealth and employment opportunities and efficient solutions to social problems.
To be telecast on NDTV, “India’s largest startup contest” seeks to find aspiring and early stage entrepreneurs and innovators, and provide them with seed funding, strategic networking and mentoring support.
The contest is a chance to positively impact the lives of millions of Indians, a chance to get your solution validated and recognised both at a national and international level, and an opportunity to get monetary rewards and other benefits. Here’s a sneak peek into some of the benefits on the cards for those who apply and win.
The program would energize the entrepreneurship ecosystem, it will provide seed support to top 10 start ups and help launch their ventures. The selected potential entrepreneurs will get access to mentorship from the experts from IIMCIP on right strategy, business model, product-market fit, segmentation-positioning-differentiation, marketing plan, sales pitch & process, scaling, understanding of finance, team building, technology guidance, management basics and real-life lessons. On the other hand, Department of Science and Technology will address the need of the technical know how to create the technological backbone of a project to speed and scale up the entire start up ecosystem.