One of i2I’s organizing team, Paras Rawal recounts the day spent at i2I 2009

The big day had arrived on 9th January’09. It was the morning when months of hard work for the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIM Calcutta was coming to a conclusion and probably all set to be the most important day of their lives for the 9 finalist teams who ha d come down from all over the country. It was the i2I ’09 grand finale.

For the people who aren’t sure of what I am talking about, i2I-ideas to Implementation is the Biggest Business-Plan competition in India. It is the pioneer in the field of not just making B-School teams come up with good ideas to win certain prize money, it gives these teams the biggest Venture Capitalists Pitch of their lives. In short we don’t produce winners we produce Entrepreneurs!

This year for i2I ‘09 we had over 200 teams from all over the country out of which 48 got their first VC pitch at the 4 regional finals which took place in the month of December. Just 10 teams were selected for the grand finale in Kolkata to be held alongside Intaglio. Some of the ideas were innovative beyond imagination while many were as elaborate as a running business. But as expected from the VC’s many of the finalists were plans which have already started their operations or would do that very soon.

The venue for the finals was The Saturday Club in Kolkata. The setting was perfect. The top 40 soon to be entrepreneurs of this country and the esteemed jury panel, which was no less than a dream come true for these teams. The Jury included Mrs. Sharon Bamford, CEO of UK India Business Council; Mr. Saurabh Mehta from Indavest Partners LLC; Prof. Trevor Newsom, Queens University, Belfast; Mr. Shoummo Acharya, President of TiE Kolkata; Mr. Bikram Das Gupta, Founder & CEO of Globsyn Group of Companies; Prof. Anjan Raichaudhari, IIM Calcutta; Mr. Vasant Subramanyam, Founder & CEO of Last Peak Data Pvt. Ltd and Shradha Sharma, Founder & CEO ofYourstory.in. The teams went all out to push their ideas and to make their dreams come true. The jury was highly impressed by all the finalists and the kind of innovation they had witnessed in the competition. Sharon confessed that a testament that the teams were very well prepared was that inspite of getting just 3 hours of sleep, she was all awake. To complete the setting the venue was swarmed with media with reporters from CNN-IBN, Indian Express to name a couple.

Quoting one of the jury panelists- “all these projects are fundable, what we are trying to do is to find the most investable projects”. Mrs. Sharon Bamford who had flown in from UK exclusively to be a part of the jury had difficulty in finding the best among the teams which they could take forward and mentor and support. One of my personal high moments being when one the team members came upto me and Aravind, and said- “we have been to other IIMs but the professionalism with which the event has been handled, it has been truly memorable”.

By the end of it the moment of truth came, time for results. I am sure all the teams had their fingers(or whatever they could) crossed! The jury announced that two of the teams Aksharit (Dhariwal Bros. from Jodhpur) in the field of Toys & Games Industry, and HelloDoctor24X7 (7 doctors, 5 engineers and 5 MBAs from Orissa) in the field of E-health and Telemedicine – were identified that were fundable and VCs have indicated they wish to follow up with them in the future.

But as a perfect culmination to the event UK India business council hosted a Cocktail dinner in the honor of Mrs. Bamford and the i2I finalists at The Park Hotel. The guests included the who’s who of this part of the country and UK in entrepreneurship. This also provided all the teams with the extremely important networking opportunity which all of them grabbed with both hands and for us it was a jolly good time.

For Jokatimes
Paras Rawal