Masterplan 2013[/b]
Masterplan, IIMA's flagship B-plan competition, held as part of Confluence 2013, the International Annual Business Summit of IIM Ahmedabad and organized by the Entrepreneurship Cell concluded on Friday, 29 November 2013. Masterplan has always witnessed exciting business ideas over the years and the current edition was no exception. The competition, launched in August this year, came to a fitting end where 20 shortlisted teams selected out of more than 300 came down to IIMA to present their ideas in front of a panel of judges. The panel comprised of eminent personalities in the entrepreneurship space from iCreate and VentureStudio.
The competition saw a wide range of ideas from e-Learning solutions, motion-sensing devices to recyclable paper pallets and sponsored stationery products. The winners of Masterplan were Team Opensense, who presented a Video Analytics solution. It’s a tool that can work on an existing camera and connectivity and also on low-end devices. The tool claims to track people’s movement, time of stay, unnatural events, dropping of bags, people with weapons, etc. The team claims that there is a huge market of 1 lakh ATMs in India which are potential users of such a gadget having a cloud-based service model. This would serve as a proactive mechanism to alert an abnormal incident in an ATM center and allow the concerned stakeholder to take faster actions. Some of the big spin-off applications of this solution could be vehicle-monitoring in strategic locations, speed tracking, etc. Hari Sasi, the team lead, stated that they have an experienced team in implementing large-scale technology enabled products and services and has a strong belief in the potential of this idea as well.
The runners-up of Masterplan, Team Samudhrarakshak, proposed a product solution in the form of a marine navigational device to assess the International Maritime Border Line and prevent Indian fishermen boats from trespassing into the foreign waters. It’s a high-tech module with a low cost and high efficiency for the fishermen. The team leader Mr. Nelson Naveen, a student of Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai, said that they have received accolades from various institutions before for this idea and would surely like to continue this in the form of a business.
The judges had a tough time selecting the winners and their message to the teams was that this competition should just be a starting point in their entrepreneurial journey and act as a learning experience for them. The finalists were all praises for the mentorship module introduced by Masterplan this year, and said that it really helped them groom their naïve idea with the support of the mentor. The organizing team was extremely pleased with its effort in managing this event for the last 3 months, and confident that Masterplan 2013 would serve as a launch-pad for several business ideas to transform into some of the emerging startups in the near future.
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