What are the projects we do?
Conquest
Conquest is BITS Pilani’s Startup Accelerator, run as the flagship project of the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. It is India’s first student-run Startup Accelerator and has been running since 2003.
Conquest helps the best founders build great businesses and raise money. Our program includes mentoring the most exciting startups from across the country and connecting them with field experts. Startups get exposed to our extensive network of mentors and investors, over a period of three months. At the Grand Finale, the Top 10 startups out of the thousands of applicants, pitch in front of investors and media houses, culminating in the winner bagging an equity-less cash prize.
To nurture the startup ecosystem on campus, Conquest also has a BITSian track where the top BITSian startups get direct entry to the Accelerator and gain pan-India exposure.
In the past, Conquest has had success stories like SocialCops, which was acclaimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has also been recognized as the Most Impactful Startup of 2017 by YourStory. One of the program’s latest finalists, Trell, raised 4 million US dollars and is currently valued at $19 million US dollars.
Desert Hack
Previously organized under the banner of Startup Weekend (backed by Techstars and Google for Entrepreneurs), Desert Hack is an initiative where participants get an opportunity to explore the entrepreneur in themselves as they get to brainstorm on their own idea and develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) by the end of the program. Apart from this, this hackathon involves mentorship to the participants, panel discussion from eminent people in the startup ecosystem, and premium resources that are given to assist them in growing their venture.
To help the students better their chances of doing well in the hackathon, a series of ideation challenges are organized throughout the year which aims to improve the students thinking ability as well as come up with innovative solutions to relevant problems on and off-campus.
Desert Hack also conducts workshops to help students build upon important skills to enable them to build a product of their own.
Panel Discussion during Desert Hack
PayTM VP, Sourabh Jain, at Desert Hack
Summer in a startup
Summer in a Startup is a unique project catering to the BITSian community, helping them bag internships in startups and spend their summers in swanky offices. SiS shaped out of a motive to save the fledgling culture of interning at startups by students and to clear away the misconceptions of startups not being interested in inexperienced students.
Students spend a summer in the environment that is best to sharpen their analytical skills: a growing startup that throws challenging problems at them everyday.
It is an attempt to not only give startups the brightest talents but also selectively handpick startups where the learning curve is steep and our applicants learn to multitask.
Info session organized by SiS, on “Interning in a Startup”
RED
Rural Entrepreneurship Development was incepted with the main motive of creating self-sustainable ventures for underprivileged people around Pilani.
One of the core projects that we are working on is to help local women establish a small cottage industry to make papads. To ensure the supply we have tied up the production with local consumption at Pilani and even our messes so as to provide a fixed sustainable form of revenue to these women.
Overall, RED aims to identify commonly available resources which can be used to bring out products that are economical and competitive in the market.
E-week
Entrepreneurial Week, also known as E-Week is a week-long extravaganza completely organized by the first-year recruits of CEL BITS Pilani, The aim of E-week is to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit on campus by organizing various events on campus for the BITSian community.
This project is a great opportunity for the first-year recruits as it gives them complete autonomy to pull the event off, they are responsible for the ideation of the events, its logistics, its marketing on campus through various means as well as the sponsorship they have to raise. The learning curve a recruit goes through during these three months of ideation and sorting of operations is tremendous as it instills various qualities in them like innovation, critical analysis, and hands-on thinking and they also get exposure to the industry as they reach out to and negotiate with potential sponsors.
The students are expected to organize six events for each day, the finale being reserved for the flagship event of E-Week called Bedrock, in which students are given a restaurant on C’not Place to handle for a day where they have to get as much profit for the restaurant they own as they can, the C’not Place transforms into a festive place bustling with students, music, and lights as Bedrock takes place.