Eximius 2022

From digital financial inclusion, women and social entrepreneurship to technology and healthcare – Eximius 2022 showcases it all

Two-day entrepreneurship summit at IIMB features plethora of events including panel discussions, keynote speeches, workshops, start-up expo, case contests and business competitions

Students of IIM Bangalore’s two-year full time MBA: Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP), hosted the annual entrepreneurship summit, Eximius 2022, on July 9 and 10 (Saturday and Sunday), 2022. 

This year’s event, themed on ‘Start. Scale. Sail.’, was held entirely offline, after a gap of two years. The event included speaker sessions, workshops and business case competitions in the fields of Marketing, Finance, Analytics and more.

Eximius 2022 was inaugurated by Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan, Director, IIM Bangalore; Prof. Sourav Mukherji, Dean, Alumni Relations & Development; Prof. R Srinivasan, Chairperson of PGP and PGP in Business Analytics, and Tushar Arora, Senior Financial Specialist, The World Bank, who was also the Chief Guest. Tushar Arora, in his address, spoke about the need for digital financial inclusion and women entrepreneurship.

Panel discussions and keynote speeches

Ramanan Ramanathan, First Mission Director for Atal Innovation Mission and Additional Secretary at NITI Aayog, stressed on the importance of fostering a culture of entrepreneurship in today’s youth. He recommended a three-pronged approach of creating a mindset of entrepreneurship in today’s students, providing them with opportunities to solve real-world problems and supporting them through incubators and accelerators. Stressing on the ever-increasing importance of technology and its application in different sectors of the economy, he explained the need for Atmanirbhar Bharat through its five pillars.

In a panel discussion with Ashok Kamath, Chairman, Akshara Foundation and Madan Padaki, Founder & CEO, 1BRIDGE, the rise and importance of Social Entrepreneurship in India was discussed. Madan Padaki stressed on the importance of seizing the right opportunities and said, “If you can go and create opportunity, people will take it up and adapt to it.” Diving deep into the importance of Social Entrepreneurship in rural India, he added, “First, you reach a billion smiles, and a billion-dollar valuation is just a by-product of it.” The importance of ventures in rural India found focus in Ashok Kamath’s talk who said: “You cannot exclude rural children from education”.

In another panel discussion titled: ‘Thinking Health, Thinking Entrepreneurship’, three entrepreneurs in the healthcare field, Sohit Kapoor, Co-founder DRiefcase; Mehak Malik, Co-founder & CEO, Uvi Health, and Pritish Gupta, Dozee Health, shared their entrepreneurial journey and key learnings. Stressing on the importance of healthcare, Sohit said, “It has taken Covid for the whole world to wake up to healthcare. The biggest myth about the healthcare industry is that doctors do not like technology. In fact, the onus is on us to provide the doctors with a good solution – the use case needs to be worked out for them”. Pritish pointed out that: “The challenges in the healthcare system are huge as the numbers are also huge”. Mehak said that the doctor-patient interaction could be a problem, especially in villages. “You cannot build a minimum viable product in healthcare, so my focus was on a minimum awesome product”.

Yashish Dahiya, Co-founder – PolicyBazaar, in his talk on: ‘How to create a start-up in entirely new space’, reflected on his journey at IIMA. He said that it was IIMA which made him realize that he was meant to be an entrepreneur. While talking about start-up culture he said: “If you ask us what our culture is, it has to do a lot with selflessness”.

Manish Jethani, Co-founder of Hevo Data, in his talk on: ‘The Rise to being the Powerhouse of Data’, educated the students about the differences between B2B SaaS and B2C Saas. He also highlighted the importance of being open to technology to solve real-world problems. “If you do not know technology in the next few years, the situation will be similar to being a genius but not knowing how to speak”.

Workshops, Start-up Expo and Case Competitions

Eximius 2022 included workshop sessions on ‘How to analyze a Stock’ by Shashank Udupa, Founder & COO, Avalon Meta, ‘Legal 101 for Start-ups’ by Jalaj Joshi, Managing Partner, Crystal Legal and ‘How to Start your Own Podcast’ by Anurag Manik, Host, M-Square Podcasts.

The event also provided an opportunity to start-ups to showcase their offerings to a diverse crowd of investors, entrepreneurs and customers. Few of the notable start-ups were: Phable, Readon, Neuphony, Multibashi, etc.

Business Competitions

BzzWings, the B-plan competition organized in association with NSRCEL, the innovation and entrepreneurship hub of IIM Bangalore, had teams presenting their ideas that could shape the future of businesses. Pitcher Perfect, IIMB’s version of Shark Tank, where start-ups pitched their ideas in the sectors of healthcare and education to investors/VCs, saw a good number of budding entrepreneurs present their ideas.

Day One of Eximius was marked by performances from TAAL – the dance club of IIMB and Dhwani – the music club of IIMB. The day was wrapped up with performances from the Tapi Project and Kumar Varun. The two-day entrepreneurship summit concluded with a closing ceremony featuring Avnish Sabharwal, Managing Director, Accenture Ventures & Open Innovation and Prof. R Srinivasan. Avnish Sabharwal spoke about the need for innovation and creating a start-up ecosystem to help Indian start-ups succeed. The event drew to a close on 10th July with a performance from Masala Coffee, the Indian music band.

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