The Guwahati round of ASSOCHAM Launchpad – Startup Elevator Pitch Series, an initiative for budding entrepreneurs conducted at Technology Incubation Centre, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), concluded on February 18.
Guwahati-based Medilane Healthtech and Consultancy Services, OLatus Systems and Pratyaksha Agrotech emerged as the most promising innovators in the region who will now battle in the ring, pitch for glory and get a chance to become India’s startup heroes at the grand finale in New Delhi soon.
Of about 80 applications received by ASSOCHAM from across the region, 23 startups were shortlisted who got a chance to meet world-class mentors, investors, companies having decades of industry experience to help give a better shape to their business idea, pitch for funding and technology partners to generate business opportunities.
All the applications received were evaluated based on certain parameters including – innovation, problem-solving, social impact, team qualification, experience, business scalability, profitability and others.
Budding startups from different sectors had been invited for pitching. The participants mostly belonged to the early-stage startups category i.e. those between 0-2 years of operations and established startups with 3–5 years of operations.
After careful review and evaluation by an expert panel of judges, three winners stood out among their competition for demonstrating exemplary innovation and other achievements.
As part of the Elevator Pitch, all shortlisted entrepreneurs and founders were given 300 seconds to explain the concept and idea of a service or product to the jury. The top three winners from Guwahati will now get an opportunity to scale up and raise finance and/or technology or even marketing partnership with venture capitalists, mentors or independent professionals of global repute.
Altogether 36 finalists (3 each selected from 12 cities) will present their ideas at the grand finale, of which the top three will be selected. There are prizes worth Rs 1.5 crore to be won. While the top five startups will get USD 5000 each from AWS (Amazon Web Service), the next 15 startups will get USD 2000 and the next 80 will get USD 1000 worth credits.
