Students test start-up waters at four-day Anna University fest

It comprised of creative programmes such as ‘Runway’, where aspiring student entrepreneurs presented their ideas to 20 prospective investors who adopted their business strategy and ‘Startup street’ which were on the spot start-up opportunities, giving students a chance to get internships or land a job with an established start-up. Ram Prasad, an alumnus who started Protovalley, a 3D printing business hired five students as interns at the fest. 

“The highlight of the fest was ‘Startup Weekend’, a 54-hour marathon powered by Google, which had 150 participants signing up. The students worked on their dream start-up project, which was judged by a 20-member jury. 

The participants lived on campus during the 54 hours, which began on February 24 evening. They were provided with food, beverages, blankets and other required items. They focused only on completing the project and the coding work for it”, said Abinash M, Manager of CEGAIN, an Incubator by College of Engineering, Guindy Alumni initiative.   

“The event was great success as the students have gone through a shift in their thinking and perspective of start-ups”, he said. The event also saw the hosting of ‘60 Degree Talk’—a replica of Tedx Talks. CEO of Naturals Salon and Spa, CK Kumaravel, Business Blogger Kiruba Shankar and Entrepreneur Varun Agarwal took part in delivering the talks. 

“It was all very informative and very useful,” said Alagappan H, a student of College of Engineering, Guindy and Vice President of Capitalise, a student entrepreneurship club. Actor Karthik Kumar of Evam, held the students spellbound with his talk on media, entertainment industry and start-ups. 

“Our aim was to spread the word that a startup must be a disruptive innovation. It must replace traditional practices in a better way, like what WhatsApp did to messaging services,” Alagappan said. 

Talking about the relevance of the fest, Director of Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (CED) G Ravikumar said, “The student initiative was put together by the Capitalise Club of CED. CEGAIN is now a hub to create Entrepreneurship Ecosystem. We provide free workspace for start-ups, help with seed funding and give technical mentoring.”