The Grand Finale of India’s Future Tycoons, the first ever entrepreneurship platform ENpower designed to attract young minds from school going students to present their ideas concluded with outstanding presentation by school students on Feb 10 at CoWrks, Worl where Advit Ranawade from Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai and Anisha Jani & Rahil Chadha from Arya Vidya Mandir School also from Mumbai were adjudged as the best team. Along with the cash prize, the team also received tablets,certificates, gift vouchers and an opportunity to intern with top companies. Their proposed venture,named Bloom, is based on an idea of an external Tap attachment consisting of an array of sensors, Digital IOT tech and Micro nozzles.This attachment will convert water to mist. Their aim was to conserve water and reduce itsconsumption by 90%, which will further minimize the water bill. The children impressed judges with their presentation skills, confidence, innovative ideas, strategic thinking and technological use. Some teams had even created their own websites and prototype mobile applications. The jury panel comprised of EN Venkat, partner at AavishkaarCapital, Kamal Singh, Executive Director, UN Global Compact Network India, VinodMurali, Managing Partner at Alteria Capital Advisors LLP and Ajay Kaushal, Co-founder and Director at BillDesk
The competition attracted over 1200 teams from 252 schools across 52 cities in the country. After a stringent process of elimination,the Grand Finale witnessed Top 12 teams competing for a grand cash prize of Rs. 120,000/-
Advit, part of the winning team, had come up with an idea to make a FitBit for water taps that converts water to mist, thereby reducingthe water flow and saving the amount of water utilized. This 13 year old tech freak is also an avid coder, and is fluent in four coding languages.
Ist runner up
A parent of the winning team student said “No amount of education can equal practical learning. Our children have learned a lot through practical experience provided by the founders of ENpower and the teachers present at the boot camps who guided them with the strategizing, marketing and business development division for their venture idea. We were glad to see them work with immense passion, hard work and dedication with an eagerness in their spirit to win the competition”.
The Second RunnersUp team from AVM Bandra said “We had already made a skeleton of the idea, the boot camp helped us gauge competition, gave us an idea about entrepreneurship and also how we can turn this into a venture.” Their venture, named Owlett, was inspired by the zeal to provide students with news from around the world, which is fun and easy to read. Since children these days are unable to form opinions about current events due to complicated jargons in newspapers, they wanted to make a simplified version of newspapers that would make children become smarter and help them hold a conversation even about serious topics like politics and economics.
The First RunnersUp team from Hyderabad presented True Wipes, an idea based on converting the so-called wasteful Corn crops into useful, chemical free, handmade wet wipes with high water holding capacity. Inspired by Ikea using sustainable replacements for wood, this team aimed to help the world with eco-friendly tissues at affordable prices and empower the jobless technocrats.
Talking about India’s Future Tycoons as a platform, student from True Wipes team said “We never dreamt of becoming entrepreneurs. Like many others, we would dream of becoming a teacher, a doctor or an engineer. We initially registered to just explore the platform but today post the learning in the boot camp and working on our own ideas for the Finale, the experience has left a mark of entrepreneurial dreams in us”.
Out of 48 teams participating in IFT competition,RBK international School had the maximum number of teams (17) qualifiying for the boot camps. Principal of RBK International School, Ms. Sagreeka Roy Bhatia said “Since the 21st century skill set requires students to logically reason and think critically, I wanted to give my children a platform to express their views. This was a great learning platform for students to learn life skills on entrepreneurship, marketing and branding provided by India’s Future Tycoon”
There were also other award winning categories. TheMost Innovative Idea was won by a team from Kota which took part in this event through a video conference. Their idea has multiple products which advocate water conservation and reuse of Grey Water in the flushing system of toilets.
The Best Brand Idea was bagged by a team from National Public School, Chennai. Their idea, called Enfocation, is a platformthat provides ExperientialLearning through local skilled worker who also benefit in the form of additional income sources.. The Best Elevator Pitchwas won, again, by a team from National Public School, Chennai. Their venture,FreEd, allows public school students to partner with private school students for their education. TheBest Business Model was won by Poshan, again a team fromNational Public School, Chennai– theymade an app that provides subscription-based healthy meals for preteens from home chefs.
