The 11th edition of Eximius, IIM Bangalore’s National Entrepreneurship Summit, saw NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) holding an Intern Fair. The fair witnessed start-ups across various sectors sharing their internship opportunities.

Interns at NSRCEL and participating colleges benefited from the ecosystem of industry experts, mentors, researchers and academicians available to start-ups.

NSRCEL also held Bzzwings - a B-Plan competition, which saw participation of around 300 teams. The case focused on transforming innovative ideas into fruition in an attempt to take the society and industry to greater heights. The top two winning teams got an opportunity to incubate their ideas at the NSRCEL while the other 10 teams got mentorship opportunity from NSRCEL.

Eximius is the largest annual entrepreneurship summit amongst the B-schools of India, which aims to stimulate the spirit of innovation in budding entrepreneurs and students from across the country. The event was organised by the The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell of IIMB. The event was inaugurated by Birendra Kumar, General Manager and Zonal Head of Bengaluru Zone, Bank of Baroda, Deepak Ohri, CEO, Lebua Hotels, Ananth Narayanan, CEO, Myntra and Jabong and Yashish Dahiya, Founder, PolicyBazaar.

Importance of entrepreneurship

Speaking on the occasion Prof Padmini Srinivasan, Chair of the Post Graduate Programme in Management at IIMB, highlighted the importance of entrepreneurship and its need in today’s world in contributing towards a better global society. The faculty head of NSRCEL, which is the hub of entrepreneurial activity at IIMB, and Dean of Alumni Relations and Development, Prof. K. Kumar, was also present at the opening ceremony and provided his insights into the world of entrepreneurship.

The event’s title sponsor was Bank of Baroda.

The first-day saw keynote speaker sessions by K Ganesh, a serial entrepreneur and partner - Growth StoryDeep Bajaj, founder PeeBuddy, Rohan Ganpathy, CEO and Director, Bellatrix Aerospace, Ameet Choudhary, Founder, eLaundry, and Venkatesh Iyer, Founder, Goli Vada Pav, gave insights about their unconventional start-up ideas and how they made their start-ups a success.

Gaurav Sachdeva, CEO, JSW Ventures, and Srikrishna Murthy, CEO, Sattva Consulting, also shared their valuable insights with students of different business and undergraduate schools. Akansh Gaur, Vyom Charaya and Amit Golani formed the popular and much awaited TVF Panel, wherein they shared acumen about starting up in the online media space.

Venture Capital

The ‘VC and Entrepreneurship’ workshop saw various aspects of venture capital, its necessity and why large and successful companies cannot be built without VC or without technology.

The Art of Inclusion was a talk-cum-workshop by entrepreneurs of transgender community— the Aravani Art Project— on mural paintings depicting vibrant cultures and communities intertwined into a beautiful story.

Social innovation

Vikasana, the social impact club of IIM Bangalore, organised its flagship Social B-Plan competition at Eximius 2018. The competition focused on coming up with innovative ideas that would create a revolution in the social sector. The winners of the competition were Amartya and his team from Vellore Institute of Technology who came up with a product based solution to curb water crisis. The second position was grabbed by the team from the Indian Institute of Management Kashipur led by Mukund Agarwal who came up with the idea of delivering quality farm products whilst keeping them as fresh as possible.