Urban Venture Challenge aimed to showcase social innovation products and services that will improve our cities. As part of this agenda, a select group of entrepreneurs working on city transformation start-ups participated in a bootcamp and Pitch Fest. This initiative started with a online ideas contest where we got 115+ applications out of which 12 venture teams were selected to participate in a startup bootcamp with a workshop on applying design thinking/ business model canvas.
UVC was hosted by Urban Venture Labs & IIM- RERI, Bangalore and supported by The Urban Vision, Stanford CDDRL , Asia Initiatives( NYC) .Asia Initiatives has committed 5000 USD to 25,000 USD in grants to the ventures in our challenge which apply the SoCCs Model. IIM’s NSRCEL is offering LaunchPad Program to some of the teams. The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation & Mumbai Angels were on the Jury
The 12 Social Venture Teams presented their ideas to a eminent Jury. Jurors included Dr. Jagan Shah, NIUA ; Abhishek Bhatewara, Mumbai Angels ; Padmanabhan, Asia Initiatives ; Santhosh Ramdoss , Michael Susan Dell Foundation ;Naresh Narasimhan , Founder , NUMA ;Prof.Suresh Bhagavatula, IIM B ; Ravichandar Venkataraman, Civic Evangelist & Philanthropist ; Social Entrepreneur Ashwin Mahesh.
Ravichandar Venkataraman, Civic Evangelist moderated the discussion with key ecosystem partners on how to enable city transformation. (L-R) Padmanabhan, Asia Initiatives; Abhishek Bhatewara, Mumbai Angels; Dr. Jagan Shah, Director, NIUA; Prof. Gopal Naik, , IIMB; Steven Babitch, Presidential Innovation Fellow, White House .