History

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT-Bombay is a non-profit independent student body which aims to spread the spirit of entrepreneurship among students and working professionals. It comprises entirely of students of IIT-Bombay. Amongst the various events conducted by the body, Eureka! and the Entrepreneurship Summit [1] have seen a lot of participation and witnessed the presence of a large number of speakers in the past.In 2000, Eureka! was declared Asia's Largest Business plan competition by CNN [2] and has continued to retain that position till date.

2010: Vulture’s Nest, India’s first funding reality show gets aired on national television. REUTERS declares Eureka! as “Asia’s Largest Business Plan Competition”. 1985 batch of IIT-B decides to support Eureka!

2009: Dhama apparels, a team that pitched in the Investor’s pitch in E-Summit 2008 gets funded through the same investors they pitched to.

2008: E-Cell, IIT Bombay represents India and the Indian subcontinent at the Global Conference of E-Cells’ organized by MIT at Madrid, Spain in April 2008.

2005: E-Cell recognized as the Leading Entrepreneurship Promoting Student Organization in the country by the ‘’NEN Achievement Awards’” instituted by the Wadhwani Foundation and felicitated at TiECon 2005.

2004: The Wadhwani Foundation initiates a countrywide effort for entrepreneurship development, through the creation of a National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). E-Cell IIT Bombay selected as one of the five founding members.

2003: Wadhwani Foundation sets up Entrepreneurship Network

2002: Eureka! Offers Incubation at Silicon Valley.

2001: Eureka! – E-cell’s B-Plan competition recognized as ‘Asia’s largest business plan competition’ by CNN.

2000: Business incubator SINE inaugurated by Nandan Nilekani, CEO, Infosys and Mr. Kanwal Rekhi, venture capitalist and Director, TiE, jump starts with 8 startups incubated already.

1999: Right half, the first campus startup of IIT Bombay and of any engineering institute in India. Kashyap Deorah, B.Tech., Computer Science and Engineering, Batch of 2000, along with the two IIT batch mates, started the company while in their final year.

1998: The Entrepreneurship Cell born as a part of a career management center (CMC) for IIT Bombay in October 1998. In the proposal for CMC, the purpose of such a cell would be to “promote entrepreneurship as a career option for students” and to “assist any product or venture” initiated by them with the help of the Incubation Center and School of Management. Prafulla Krishna, Vikas Jain, Amol Parkhe, Maninder Gulati, Sameer Shetty, Rahul Gupta and Abhishek Mishra: the first team. Emotions, aspirations and ambitions. Work begins.

References

1. http://www.ecell.in/esummit
2. http://www.ecell.in/eureka