Come with ideas, Leave with Funded Startups

Organized by Jamsetji TATA Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (JITSIE), IIT Madras, Startup Ignition Cell (SIC), RVEI and Wadhwani Foundation, START-A-THON is India’s first-of-its-kind hackathon where participants get an opportunity to pitch their ideas to angel investors, who fund their ideas with real money in exchange for equity. Thus, START-A-THON provides you an opportunity to convert your high-impact ideas into funded startups.

Start-A-Thon comprises mentorship sessions from Wadhwani Foundation, followed by the ideation, prototyping, mock-pitching rounds and finally, the Grand Finale. Participants can participate in teams of 1 to 3 members and work on any problem statement- not limited to domains in sustainability, smart cities, agri-tech, health-tech, fintech, AI-ML, AR-VR, web3, e-commerce and social impact.

The initial rounds (ideation and prototyping) would be online. The mock-pitch round would be in hybrid mode and the Grand Finale would be offline in Bengaluru where the participants would pitch their MVPs to angel Investors, raise pre-seed/ seed funding and bag some amazing cash rewards and schwags.

Hackathon Structure:
Registration (Ideation) Phase → Building (Prototyping) Phase → Online Judging → Finale (Pitching and Fund-Raising)

1. The Registration and Ideation Phase will include the interested participants to register themselves on Devfolio, complete their profile and submit their ideas. Based on your domain of idea, we would separate you into two tracks- normal track and Web3 track. In between, we will have talks and sessions by industry experts on Entrepreneurship over the period of one month, mentoring the students on generating and validating ideas and help with pre-incubation.

2. After the Application Review Period The Building (Prototyping) Phase would start. This would be a 48 hours hackathon, held in online mode where builders would build a prototype/mvp for their proposed idea. The judges would judge your ideas and prototypes.

3. Mock-Pitch Round: Selected students from the Prototyping round would move forward for the mock-pitch round, where the teams pitch in front of a jury, in online/offline mode to explain their revenue/impact model. Ideas that are scalable and have that spark of becoming a profitable startup, would be taken forward for the Grand Finale to be held in Bengaluru.

4. The Grand Finale: Finalists pitch in front of angel investors (sharks), who invest their money in the ideas in exchange for equity. Thus, Finalists get a chance to convert their ideas into funded startups. Finalists also get relevant incubation opportunities. Idea-turned-startups with the highest valuation get cash rewards as well, apart from the pre-seed/seed funding.

Disclaimer: Angels invest in ideas, only if they want to. Coming to the Finale, does not guarantee that your idea will get funded (Just similar to Shark Tank). Ideas-turning-into-Startups through this Startathon, would be required to give upto 7% equity to the organizers.

Come with ideas, leave with funded startups !!!
Happy Hacking :)🚀

Please join the below WhatsApp group for regular updates on the hackathon:
https://chat.whatsapp.com/GNRsVcDyP1A68ofgL6dyQN