Internal Business Plan/Prototype Competition

Don Bosco College of Engineering, Fatorda- Goa is one of the institutes to be selected for establishing MHRD – Institute Innovation Council (IIC). Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Govt. of India has established MHRD’s Innovation Cell (MIC) (https://www.mic.gov.in/) to systematically foster the culture of Innovation amongst all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) pan India. The primary mandate of MIC is to encourage, inspire and nurture young students by supporting them to work with new ideas while they are in formative years

As part of the drive, an Internal Business Plan/Prototype competition was held in online mode to invite business models from young minds. The competition was held on the  May 3, 2021 on google meet platform. Two eminent jury members – Mr. Sudip Faldesai, Project Officer at Goa State Innovation Council and Prof Achintya Kambli, Assistant Professor Mechanical Department, Don Bosco College of Engineering, were invited to judge the event. Among the audience were also present Dr. Neena Panandikar, Principal – DBCE, Dr. Varsha Turkar, President IIC-DBCE, and other IIC and faculty members. This event helped evaluate business proposals presented by various teams.

Prof Swapnil Ramani, host and co-ordinator of the event welcomed the judges and introduced the teams. A total of 100 plus students joined the meet and the participating teams presented fabulous business ideas with most of them exhibiting enormous potential for start-ups.  To outline a few, more than one team came up with idea/prototypes on innovative medium of teaching using Augmented Reality. Another team presented a fabulous concept and prototype of Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring system that would assist healthcare professionals to study a patient better by continuously monitoring various vital parameter on the go. Yet others presented prototypes that detected formalin content in fish along with fish identification using Machine Learning.

Some of the teams proposed software solutions that would help the general public. One team implemented the idea sourcing advisors (legal consultancy) through an app in terms of finding legal help when required. A solution was proposed and executed for people to avoid long queues at car washing centres along with a streamlined process.

Students of the final year engineering, demonstrated good professional-presentation skills, with great innovative solutions to problems, that left the judges impressed.

 The finalists of the competition were Team ‘Aikyam’ – Innovative Medium of Learning using Augmented Reality, followed by team ‘IRIS – Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitor and team ‘Legal Eagles’ – Your Legal Consultancy.

In conclusion, the event was a great success leaving all students very encouraged. This definitely will leave them motivated to explore more of Entrepreneurship towards having their own start-ups.