Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar hosted the first startup weekend in Odisha from 14th-16th August. This event was a joint collaboration of X-Seed, the idea and initiative cell of XIMB, the E-Cell of CET and Google Business Group, Bhubaneswar. The Startup Weekend is a global network of passionate leaders and entrepreneurs on a mission to inspire, educate, and empower individuals, teams and communities.
The startup weekend presented by Mindfire Solutions, was a 54 hours event across a span of 3 days. Manoj Surya was the facilitator for the entire event. The First day witnessed a pitch fire round where individuals had to pitch their idea and convince others to vote for him in 1 minute. The top 12 most voted ideas were selected and teams were made.

Day 2 began with a lot of enthusiasm and zeal from the teams to build a real product, team, and brand for execution in the real world. The teams had to focus on three core areas namely customer validation, execution and design of the idea and creating a feasible business module. Throughout the day, the teams were mentored by many successful entrepreneurs like Ankit Singh, Manish Jain, Shashank Singhal, Sibasish Mishra, Binayak Acharya and Ayaskanta Nayak. The D-day was on Sunday where the teams had to sum up all their data into a 5 minute pitch and present to the judges who were to decide the winner of the event. The Judging panel included Prof. Shridhar Dash, Professor of Finance, XIMB, Mr. Chinmoy Panda, CEO, Mindfire Solutions and Mr. Sitakanta Ray, Founder of mysmartprice.com.
After a series of brilliant startup ideas, the judges reached a unanimous decision of choosing the ‘Appconversion’ team as the winner. The idea behind Appconversion was to facilitate the businesses to get their apps installed by customers. It would create a sync between a PC and a Mobile, thereby providing ease to customers and profits to businesses. The winning team received free tickets to The August Fest which is India’s Largest Startup Conference. ‘The Stellar Grid’ was nominated as the best startup idea according to the People’s Choice. The event provided a great platform for students to learn more about prospects, challenges and opportunities in entrepreneurship and startups.
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