February 14: Apex Entrepreneurship Club of Apex College organised the fourth edition of ‘Start To Start-Up’ under the Apex Entrepreneurship Development Program from February 4 to 9 on the college premises.

Forty-five students of Masters of Business Administration (MBA) participated in the program. Antarprerana supported the program as the knowledge partner whereas Smart Cell was the title sponsor.

The first day of the event saw idea generation session in which co-founders of Urban Girl, Nikita Acharya, and Kiran Timsina assisted the participants.

On the second day, six venture ideas were pitched. The participants pitched their ideas through one-minute video and standard ‘elevator pitch’.

Vinay Devkota, CEO of Clock b Business Innovation; Bob De Jong, operations developer at Antarprerana; and Sushil Khadka, partner at Safal Partners were in the panel of jury.

On the same day, a panel discussion was held on the topic of ‘Idea Feasibility and Role of Actors in Entrepreneurship Ecosystem’.

Devkota; Niraj Khanal, CEO of Antarprerana; Amit Agrawal, CEO of Khalti Digital Wallet and Nikeeta Gautam, reporter at New Business Age were the panelist for the session.

The panelists focused on the importance of keeping their customers at ease while doing business, having a passionate and practical team, taking assistance from personal networks and support systems to create own venture and using media as a platform to educate values towards the customers.

On the third day, the participants kept their stalls on the college premises to generate revenue. On the fourth day, the participants participated in creating a prospective legal entity in a real business simulation exercise.

On the fifth day, a business prototype exhibition was held during which ‘minimum viable product’ of the participants were exhibited. Around 500 visitors attended the exhibition and voted for the best prototype model.

Sayathari Concern Pvt Ltd was voted the winner of the best prototype award. Other venture ideas exhibited were corn specialized restaurant, car wash center, 3D printing and tours management services.

Venture idea ‘Takshati Touch Up’ put forward by Trailblazers became the overall winner of the program and bagged Rs 20,000 as seed capital.