IIIT Delhi Organises Second Edition Of Pitch Cafe

IIIT Delhi recently organised Pitch Cafe 2.0 at the campus where Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia was the chief guest.

The event was held by IIITD Innovationand Incubation Center, which is a not-for-profit Company promoted by IIIT-Delhi to cultivate Innovation and Entrepreneurial ecosystem by providing Incubator and accelerator services. The event saw participation from 14 institutes/colleges from all over thecountry including IIT-Delhi and BITS Pilani.

Addressing the students Sisodia emphasized on the need to have a zeal to learn. He said, “Today the major challenge for the educators is not to teach what is already discovered, but to teach which is still to be invented. We have to teach our students to thinknew, think innovated every time. There are three types of start-ups today, one who think in the box, one who thinks out of the box and one who does not care where the box is. So decide where you are and work accordingly”.

"All the budding entrepreneurs face challenges and failures, but it is up to them whether they want to keep the failure as a burden on their head or convert them into learnings and step uponthem. Courage to float against the odds is what is required for the entrepreneurship," he added.

Pitch Cafe 2.0 was organised with the aim to foster the spirit of entrepreneurship amongst young innovators, budding start-ups and bring them closer in fulfilling their dreams.

The event provides an excellent platform for potential ideas and early-stage start-ups to be recognized by the industry.

Director of IIIT-Delhi, Ranjan Bose also addressed the teams and said, "Entrepreneurship is not a skill, it doesn’t have a switch off and on button, it is a lifestyle”.

"It is not easy to live this lifestyle, but all of you have done, so it is not easy to do a startup. You have to get everything together, and you have to do everything yourself. In the end, you may have the best idea in the world, and it may turn out not to fly. And then you just have to say sorry, it didn’t work, I will try again," he added.

The top 7 teams presented their product to a panel consisting of incubators, industrialists, startup owners and mentors.

Apart from the seven teams of IIIT-Delhi, IIT Delhi; BITS Pilani (Pilani); IIM Ahmedabad; Vellore Institute of Technology (Chennai); Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women; National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management (Sonipat); and many other institutes from NCR and other parts of the country came with their idea.

Pitch Café 2.0, also gave a chance to school students to showcase their idea of start-up, two teams from School of Excellence, Kalkaji; and one team from Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV), Lajpat Nagar presented their startups.

The innovation and incubation centre of IIIT-Delhi is supported by the Department of Science & Technology, Govt of India, and Department of Training & Technical Education, Govt of NCT of Delhi. Initially, the Center was instrumental in promoting entrepreneurshipamong the students, alumni & faculty of IIIT-Delhi and now several startups from different technology domains are also housed in the incubation center.

Over the years, the silo free environment of Incubation Center was successful in cross pollination of ideas. It has startups such as Real Vol (realtime medical visualization in virtual reality), Zailet (online entertainment blog), GoBikes (bike rental service),iNICU (Complete child healthcare solution),mywanderlust.in (a travel community), etc.