The largest entrepreneurial summit of Central India – i5 Summit 2021, conducted by IIM Indore and IIT Indore, was held at IIM Indore on August 20-22, 2021. The inauguration took place in the presence of Prof. Sushanta K Mishra, Dean-Programmes, and Prof. Swatantra, HSA Chair & Faculty, IIM Indore and was attended virtually by 800+ participants. This year, even though the summit was conducted in online mode, it saw enormous participation from all over India, with startups eager to share their ideas with angel investors. Prof. Mishra and Prof. Swatantra welcomed the participants to the summit. They applauded the i5 Summit Team for their hard work and for successfully organizing the grand summit in online mode.
Ms. Shaheen Mistri, CEO, Teach for India was the Keynote Speaker for the inaugural ceremony. She noted that although organizations across the globe are going through a major overhaul right now, underprivileged children whose education has been affected, suffer the most. In an insightful panel discussion with her Teach For India peers, Ms. Mistri brought to the spotlight several issues with the education sector, and how to tackle them.
Over the three days, the speaker series witnessed eminent speakers namely, Mr. Sandeep Aggarwal, CEO & Founder, Droom; Mr. Raghav Joshi, CEO & Co-Founder, Rebel Foods; Mr. Parthasarthi Mishra, Regional Head, UBI; Mr. Rahul Guha, MD & Partner, BCG; Mr. Aditya Maheswaran, Management Consultant & Public Speaker; and Mr. Rajiv Oza, Senior Director (HR), Stryker.
Mr. Sandeep Aggarwal shared his views on the Indian Startup evolution that has enabled the entry of new players in recent times. Mr. Raghav Joshi, alumnus of IIM Indore, talked about his journey at IIM Indore and how one should look for opportunities to solve real world problems around. He talked about the future of cloud kitchens in India and mentioned that it is being shaped and being modified every day. Mr. Guha, while interacting with the participants, shared various valuable insights about the current pandemic and the economic scenario of India. Through various databases, he led a thoughtful discussion about the GDP forecasts. Mr. Maheshwaran, an award-winning speaker, spoke on leadership and how he climbed up the ladder of career growth. Mr. Oza explained the ‘new normal’ work scenario and the importance of leadership development, cultural diversity, trust quotient between employers and employees, four quadrants of a business cycle and emphasized on the professional quadrant the most.
Two workshops were also conducted during the summit. The first workshop, 10XTD, was conducted by Mr. Gopichand Katragadda, Founder of Myelin Foundry and Mr. Siddarth Hosangadi, Founder of GoPush Consulting. The workshop focused on delivering insights on the ways India could harness opportunities amidst the current crisis by leveraging its digital and demographic dividend. The second workshop by TaskUs focused on ‘Sustained Business Growth’. It shared insights on the ways TaskUs has managed to thrive amid pandemic.
Get Funded, conducted on the third day of the summit provided budding entrepreneurs the opportunity of a lifetime to present their ideas to more than 10 VC houses and win a prize money of Rs. 50k (Rs. 30k and Rs. 20k for first and second place respectively) to fund their ideas to life. 13 start-ups shared and pitched their ideas to the VC investors. The investors included Mr. Amit Pamnani, Chief Investment Officer, Swastika Accelerator, Mr. Mohit Gulati, Chief Investment Officer, The Investment Trust of India, Mr. Sandro Stephen, Regional Head, Indian Angel Network, Lt. Col. Rajive Sinha, Co-Founder & Co-Chair, IAEGlocal, Ms. Shruti Aggarwal, Founder, The Start-up Lab and Dr. Sanjeev Patni, CEO, AIC-Prestige Inspire Foundation.
A panel discussion on the topic ‘Maintaining entrepreneur wellness and work-life balance’, was also conducted, wherein the panellists, namely, Prof. Swatantra, Faculty, IIM Indore, Ms. Richa, Co-founder YourDOST MOD, Ms. Rohini Singh, Director-Head Corp coverage, North and East India, Deutsche Bank and Ms. Surbhi Bhatia, Founder & CEO, The Mom Store, shared their insights on maintaining emotional wellness and work-life balance in the face of adversity.
‘Chai Pe Charcha’ facilitated the participants to interact with the specialists from the industry, learn from their experiences and share their thoughts.
The ‘Start-up Expo’ provided an opportunity to the young managerial minds to showcase their ideas to the investors and experts. 13 start-ups participated in the event; some of them being Skyware Automation Pvt Ltd. (Focuses on preventing storage losses of harvest in India using IoT and AI-enabled scientific storage system), PayCrunch (India’s first UPI based credit card for college students), Lekh App (Intelligent Collaborative Whiteboard that recognizes rough drawings and converts to regular shapes), among the others.
The three-day online event ended on August 22, 2021, providing the young entrepreneurs with novel understandings about their business ideas, helping them understand the key to success for being an efficacious entrepreneur, network and interact with the top-notch dignitaries of the industries and learn from their peers. The event concluded with a vote of thanks by the i5 Summit coordinators Amitosh Mittal and Tamanna Mahajan.