IEEE MGA India Entrepreneurship and Internship Initiative has been actively conducting several activities and initiatives to promote Entrepreneurship among the IEEE members. Having conducted the first Entrepreneurship Development Program in May 2015, the Initiative has since then conducted a number of Student Internship Preparation and the Entrepreneurship Development Programs in 11 cities, where many IEEE members were benefitted. As part of this, IEEE MGA India Entrepreneurship and Internship Initiative along with IEEE Hyderabad Section and IEEE Young Professionals, have hosted the first IEEE Technology Entrepreneur’s Summit on 18^th December, 2016 in T-Hub, Hyderabad. With T-Hub facilitating the largest collaboration of startups, entrepreneurs, mentors in Hyderabad’s technological ecosystem, there couldn’t have been a better venue to host the inaugural Summit. The Chief Guest of the Technology Entrepreneur Summit was Mr. Jayesh Ranjan, IT Secretary, Government of Telangana who spoke about how the government is encouraging the startups across the state and country and how one can make the most of the new Government policies, also stressing how originality is important in the startups for their sustainability.

The speakers covered various aspects of entrepreneurship which might puzzle budding and enthusiastic delegates who are going  to start their own ventures in the near future. The Summit was also appreciated as a step in the right direction to streamline students and young professionals towards the Indian government flagship initiatives like Startup India, Digital India as envisioned by the Honorable Prime Minister of India, Mr. Narendra Modi.

The initiative was supported by various IEEE societies such as IEEE Power & Energy Society, IEEE Standards Association, IEEE Hyderabad Young Professionals and IEEE Entrepreneurship. Santosh Panda, CEO of Explara talked about his startup journey and how he became a successful entrepreneur after a couple of minor setbacks. Somnath Meher, the CEO of Blink (Witworks), an IoT startup, gave an extensive idea on building a Consumer IOT Product in India. The Summit also had Anupama Panchal, CTO of Gridle talk about how to build great SaaS products to the global market, while Arun Vinayak, CPO of Ather Energy, shared his experience of buil ding an intelligent vehicle and how to penetrate futuristic markets. “IEEE Standards for Startups” and “IEEE & Entrepreneurship Opportunities” were also discussed by Sri Chandrasekharan and Rakesh Kumar respectively. A session taken by Aryasekhar Sanyal, Co-Founder of BDRC on how to penetrate Government sector markets & FMCG also had some interested audience.

The Summit witnessed a couple of panel discussions where panelists Karthik Venkat – founder of My Dream Store, Venkatesan Seshadri – CEO of TechClove and Sri Charan Lakkaraju- CEO of Stumagz tackled questions on “Leveraging the power of Crowd”, which was moderated by Nivas Ravichandran. Another panel discussion on “Cracking the ‘toughnut’ markets”, moderated jointly by Dr. Amit Kumar and Dr.Atul Negi had panelists Anupama Panchal, CTO of Gridle, Aryasekhar Sanyal, co-founder of BDRC and Prudhvi Reddy, co-founder of Think3D discuss on how to handle the various legislation policies, customer acquisition strategies, etc while handling the toughnut markets.

Apart from the speaker interactions and the very engaging panel discussions, the Summit also featured some Product Pitches where young students and budding entrepreneurs had an opportunity to pitch their prototypes to the delegates and a panel of judges. The panel, headed by Pradeep Pillai, Head – Programs of IIT Bombay SINE, provided constructive feedback to the teams on how to further improve their ideas. SINE has also offered to support Social Enterprise startups for SINE-SAP accelerator (a 3-month training program with 3 lakh funding, for 1% equity). Teams which showcased HeeYaSu- an Advanced Air Cooler and Smart Hygiene Bin were selected for further collaboration with SINE.

In conclusion, the IEEE Technology Entrepreneur’s Summit brought an array of speakers across various domains under its banner, and stimulated a receptive environment for all the budding entrepreneurs to have a comprehensive initiation into the world of Entrepreneurship, which was well appreciated by all the stakeholders associated with this Summit as well as the rest of the IEEE community.

The success and appreciation for the Technology Entrepreneur’s Summit this year has set high expectations for the further editions of TES and we definitely hope to live up to the buzz by roping in relevant speakers, sessions, partners and participants according to the trends of the hour. We would like to extend our sincere thanks and gratitude to all the partners and sponsors for helping us host this initiative with their active presence. We would also like to thank all the fantastic volunteers and the IEEE fraternity for trusting us with this initiative and providing us with their support.

By PES Young Professionals