News – Startup Weekend by E-Cell
E-Cell NIT Trichy, in association with CEDI-Sonata Entrepreneurship fund, held the fourth edition of Techstars Startup Weekend Trichy here in NIT Trichy during the 15th,16th and 17th of September. This one-of-a-kind event involved building up a startup from scratch, in 54 hours.
Around a hundred participants, both from NIT Trichy and other colleges took part in this flagship event. The event started off with the facilitator of the event, Mr.Vivek, giving a speech and explaining the specifics of Startup Weekend. The participants were then allowed to interact among themselves and later allowed to pitch their startup idea to the audience, out of which the best ones were selected.
This was followed by the formation of teams of the various selected startups. The participants started ideating, brainstorming and had thus begun the process of changing their crazy startup idea into an actual product.
Distinguished personalities such as Dorai Thodla, the Founder at iMorph, Arul Murugan, the CEO at Snack Experts, Natasha Lorraine, the Co-Founder at The Words Edge and Sunil Varghese of Hevea, were brought down to SWT to mentor the participants. They imparted priceless suggestions regarding the startups and played a huge role in guiding the participants towards the right path. 
The last day witnessed the high excitement levels of the participants as their 54-hour ordeal was about to come to an end. Their startups were going to be pitched before a panel of judges. The judges panel consisted of eminent names in the entrepreneurial world such as Muthu Ramalingam, CEO at Hello Leads, Srinivas Vuppala, Head at Sonata Software and Vikas Malpani, Co-Founder of Common Floor. The teams started pitching one-by-one and were scrutinised by the judges. The winners were given exciting coupons and goodies by the Guest of Honour, Dr.Mini Shaji Thomas, our beloved director.
The participants learnt that building a startup was not the goal, but rather building up a team was. Networking and hard work are the key to become a successful entrepreneur and the participants were helped realise the same.
– Adithya Nataraj
