Eureka! is Asia’s largest B-Model competition held by E-Cell IIT Bombay accredited independently by CNN and Thomson Reuters. Over the 19 years of its existence, teams registering for Eureka! have been competing for prizes worth INR 5 Million at stake with excellent networking opportunities in India and the Silicon Valley! “Eureka!” is a 5-month long heuristic experience. Tutelage is provided in and out, right from writing a ‘Business Model Canvas’(BMC) to drafting a ‘minimal viable product’. It is a competition of 10,000 entries fighting for INR 5 million.

It is conducted via the following phases:

Registration:  The registration portal (http://www.ecell.in/eureka/) will launch on 19th August. The participants have to fill a questionnaire (fully) before 28 September. Any discrepancy in the registration process is tantamount to being disqualified

Mentors’ Meet: Once the semi-finalists are declared, they are invited to attend a 3-day session at IIT Bombay. This session consists of various events such as Pitching, Lean Startup Methodology and the semi-finalists get to meet their mentors.

Pitching: All the finalists pitch their startup in front of the esteemed “Eureka!” jury, which consists of investors, businessmen and professionals. The final pitch is held at E-Summit in the first week of February. 

With the vision of promoting business and social innovations, we follow two tracks:

“Eureka!” Business: The Flagship event of “Eureka!”, the business track aims to help ideas develop into businesses that have the potential to revolutionize the world. The winner gets a cash prize of INR 5,00,000 while the runner up gets a cash prize of INR 3,00,000.

“Eureka!” Social: “Eureka!” Social encourages ideas and B-models which cater to people closer to the bottom of the pyramid and/or for a greener tomorrow. The winner gets a cash prize of INR 2,00,000 while the runner up gets a cash prize of INR 1,00,000.

Past winners of “Eureka!” have withstood the test of time and are successful in their endeavours, some success stories are Zostel, Social Cops, Leaf Wearables among others.

All you need is an idea that solves a problem and a team to make it work. Register today at ecell.in/eureka.

“As students, when we started SocialCops, business plan competitions played an important role in bringing us in front of mentors who could help with networks and connections. Winning such competitions as Eureka! also gave us the much-needed credibility to be taken seriously right out of college.”  -SocialCops Co-founders Varun Banka & Prukalpa Sankar.

By Eddy

Eddy is the editorial columnist in Business Fundas, and oversees partner relationships. He posts articles of partners on various topics related to strategy, marketing, supply chain, technology management, social media, e-business, finance, economics and operations management. The articles posted are copyrighted under a Creative Commons unported license 4.0. To contact him, please direct your emails to [email protected].