The first and the most interesting Young India Challenge was from 31st October to 2nd November 2014! What would you do when a teacher crashes the conference and refuses to cooperate; you move out to the lawn and have fun there. That’s what we did. Those three days were spectacular for the fact that it was our first YIC. We got overwhelming response from the delegates and speakers whose presence enriched the conference. Approx 1000 people applied for it in just a couple of months.
Young India Challenge 2014 was hosted by the entrepreneurship development cell of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. The top 10% of the applicants were selected through a two step application process – application and interview. The participants were selected from engineering, humanities and management backgrounds from Delhi NCR and there were also a few people from other cities.
We were pleased to have the following inspiring speakers across the 3 days – Annurag Batra – Chairman, BW|Businessworld; Rajiv Vij – Founder, Carzonrent; Malvika Grover – Consultant, KPMG; Gaurav Kumar – Director, KPMG, Papa CJ –Stand up comedian; Dilip Chenoy – CEO, National Skill Development Corporation; Ira Trivedi – Author; Shivani Marwaha – Consumer Intelligence, Microsoft; Priyank Narayan – Director, Ashoka University; Shamshir Rai Luthra – Veteran RJ; Jeroninio Almeida – Author and Social Entrepreneur; Ishani Chattopadhyay – Head of Asia Region, Grassroots Business Funds, Ajay Chaturvedi – Author and Social Entrepreneur and Anubha Batra – MD, Torah Learning Solutions.
It was beautiful to see Young India Challenge becoming a success despite ‘little’ hurdles that we had faced. Delegates were dedicated to the challenge, working their heads off to develop a social mobile device and finally gave their best at the presentations. Winners were announced and the great three days ended with a lovely award ceremony on a rooftop restaurant at Indian Habitat Centre. The first ever ‘Enlightened Minds Program’ was launched. Our first YIC became the memory for lifetime.
The night ended by felicitating our winning team members and the most innovative delegate (Dhruv Avdhesh).