Ritu Jha-
College students working to create their own startups can make a pitch for a program bringing together university entrepreneurs with successful business leaders as they vie for big cash prizes.
The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), founded by a group of Indian American entrepreneurs, has just announced the fourth TiE Global Business Pitch Competition for college/university students.
TiE University is one of the programs of TiE Global, a non-profit dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship around the world. It has a presence in 60 cities across 14 countries.
Through this program, TiE strives to inspire entrepreneurs through mentoring, networking, education, incubating, and funding programs and activities. It also offers in-kind prizes for building one’s start-up as also access to capital from investors and network.
TiE University program assists in the creation of the next generation of entrepreneurs by educating, mentoring and inspiring them to plan and take intelligent risks in starting a business.
“What started with 18 chapters the annual Global Business Pitch Competition one of the signature programs hosted by TiE University is getting popular among young entrepreneurs,” said Ravi Puli, the founder and chair of the Washington DC chapter and co-chair of the global program on TiE University,
“The competition has already received over 1200 applications from across the globe and again this year (2022) the competition would be virtual due to the no respite from Covid 19 yet,” he added.
The submission time has been extended and to Feb 15 date, announced Puli, given the rise of Omicron in the US, they are in the process of collecting applications for local applications, though the international submission deadline has closed.
Explaining the selection process, Puli said there is a process collecting applications for local applications. That is by March 31. There is no free and no particular theme.
He informed that to reach the global competition “the participants first go through the local competition hosted by local TiE chapters. They also provide mentoring, boot camps and workshops before teams are ready to pitch at the global competition.”
“There is a lot of response from the India side this year,” Puli said and since the US college opens in late January, “we are still open for the US participants.”
He said last year they had over 500 teams from across the globe and the competition is for 2021 graduates from college and recent graduates as well. And 31 TiE chapters have shown interest and would be part of the Global competition.
The other reason for the popularity of the TiE Global competition is its all-inclusive and not targeted on only Indian entrepreneurs and the cash price attached to it.
Adding on said that they(students) come and volunteer and get internships and become partners with key people.
“End of the day my interest is to see that students are connected to TiE network group so that they can continue to grow throughout their career. And be associated with TiE and take a responsible position.”
The competition comes with a cash prize of $100,000, of which the winning team gets $50,000 and the rest are given cash prize as well in various categories such as the best women team and social impact.
“Last year (2021) we gave cash prize to teams who qualified at the semifinals also, in the sense, every local chapter has some cash prize,” Puli said.
Giving an example of his Washington DC TiE chapter, Puli said they gave $28,500 cash prizes. Probably the highest. Last year TiE Global Competition handed $75,000 in cash prizes and the Rean Foundation $25,000 grant, that was given to eight startups.
