EDII’s Empresario Startup Summit has mentored over 1000 budding entrepreneurs in last six years
Mumbai: The annual flagship startup summit of Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), ‘Empresario,’ has mentored over 1000 budding entrepreneurs in last six years. The summit is an exclusive platform for startups, industry mentors, investors and the student community, that has provided prototype funding to selected ideas. This year’s Empresario is scheduled on March 10 and 11, 2018. Shri Suresh Prabhu, Honorable Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Govt. of India will be Chief Guest; while Mr. Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder, Infosys will be Guest of Honour at this year’s event.
The current edition of Empresario will focus on the theme of “Escalating the growth of startup ecosystem” and will see a participation of 110 odd startups for pitching to investors, 183 ideas at prototype development stage and 140 early concept stage students from colleges of Gujarat and neighboring states.
Since its inception in 2012, Empresario has emerged as one of the largest entrepreneurship fests in India. The fest brings together start-ups of all sector and participants from every niche of the country. Last year, out of 100 start-ups that pitched at the Empresario Start-Up Summit, 3 Start-Ups (Keepsake, Naapbooks, Innersense) were incubated at EDII CrAdLE and bagged a funding of Rs 1.16 Crore from YES bank.
“The concept of Empresario is to encourage students to transform their ideas into real time working and running companies. In order to ensure greater participation, we reach out to various cities and interact with the start-up community there. Some of the ideas, however raw, are innovative and solutions oriented. To encourage such ideas, Empresario also provides prototype funding of Rs. 40,000 per startup.” said Dr. Sunil Shukla, Director, EDII.
As a part of the event, every year EDII team conducts several boot camps in various cities to orient prospective young entrepreneurs with business model canvas, team building session, product showcase, and pitching session. Selected students from these camps get an exclusive opportunity to interact with industry mentors, VCs, and angel investors.
With an aim to develop business aptitude among potential young entrepreneurs and provide them with a wholesome exposure, Empresario includes mentoring session for start-ups, business plan competition, panel discussion on Corporate Social Responsibility & Innovation, design thinking workshop, fire side chat, workshop on lean start-up methodology and The Big Pitch – an exclusive platform for start-ups of all stage to pitch their businesses in front of potential investors.
This year, the event will provide an opportunity for start-ups to interact with some of the finest minds on entrepreneurship such as Mr. Digvijay Singh, COO, Indian Angel Network; Dr. H Purushottam, Chairman and Managing Director, NRDC; Dr. Neeraj Sharma, Head, Policy Research Cell, DST; Mr. Paresh Gupta, Cluster Business Leader, Small Business Banking, Yes Bank; Ms. Nidhi Saraf, Founder & CEO, Key Venture; Mr. Akshit Gupta, Co-Founder, Fund Tonic; Ms. Kanika Tekriwal, Founder, JetSetGo; Mr. Emmanuel Murray, Senior Advisor, Caspian Impact Investments; Mr. Varun Deshpande, Founder, Getnuo; Mr. Nikhil Kamath, Co-founder & CEO, Zerodha; Mr. Vinod Keni, Partner, Artha Ventures; Mr. Sanjay Kiran Enishetty, MD & CEO, 50K Ventures; Mr. Ankit Raj Singh, Co-Founder, Ah Ventures!; Ms. Vijaylaxmi Das, CEO, FWWB; Mr. Nischal Shetty, Founder, WazirX; Mr. Amit Sigal, Founder, Startup Buddy; and Mr. Vishal Nigam, Chairman, Indian BlockChain Council, CEO-Blockstein.