Ten School Teams selected as winners at the Grand Finale of India@75 Youth Ideathon

• More than 94000 school students from over 7000 schools participated in India’s largest festival of entrepreneurial ideas organised by ThinkStartup in association with MEPSC and CBSE 
• Top 25 teams selected after gruelling 4 rounds give a glimpse of futuristic startups and innovation at the grand finale held at IIT Delhi 

New Delhi, 1^st November 2022: India@75 (Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav): YOUTH IDEATHON 2022, the two-month long festival of entrepreneurship and innovation for school students culiminated at the precincts of IIT Delhi with the selection of 10 brightest and smartest student teams for incubation grant of Rs. 1 lakh each.  

On a day, where Top 25 teams, screened after gruelling four rounds that saw participation of more than 94000 school students from over 7000 schools in India, showcased their innovation to high profile jury comprising of Mr. Anil Kumar Pokhriyal, CEO of Management Entrepreneurship Professional Skills Council; Mr. Vinay Bansal, founder of Infection Point Ventures; Ms Anisha Bhasin from Atal Innovation Mission and Mr Shubham Goel, Head of Atal Tinkering Labs, the Top 10 teams selected include a team from Government Higher Secondary School at Kreeri, Baramulla that demonstrated an innovative apple grading solution to address the market pain of apple producers in Kashmir. A team from Sunbeam School in Varanasi show cased a low cost model of ventilator to increase in affordability of critical life saving device in hospitals. Another team from Amity International School at Vasundhara gave a taster of high protein laddus made of low cost nutrient extracted from fruit wastes. Yet another shining example of innovation came from young students of Bal Bhawan Public School in New Delhi who demonstrated Sloot, a file compression app that can be a huge relief to millions of computer owners by releasing upto 80% of disk space. The other teams in Top 10 came from Bharatiya Vidya Bhwan’s RK Sarda Vidya Mandir in Raipur, Darbari Lal DAV Public School in Pitampura, Delhi Public School RK Puram, Delhi Public School at Bangalore North, Neerja Modi School in Jaipur and Mayoor School in Noida.

The novel five-stage competition of innovative entrepreneurship ideas by school students was organised by ThinkStartup in association with Management Entrepreneurship Professional Skills Council (MEPSC) and Baja Allianz Life and has been recognised by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). 

Speaking at the award distribution ceremony at the Grand Finale of Youth Ideathon to recognise the outstanding contribution of students, mentors, teachers and schools, Dr Biwajit Saha, Director, Skill Development, CBSE said, “The New Education Policy 2020 released by Prime Minister Modi has provided a clear thrust to the theme of innovation and entrepreneurialism in schools and Youth Ideathon is an important annual event to recognise the innovation efforts of school students in India. It is a comprehensively designed intervention and shall not only provide the right thrust to establish a culture of innovation amongst schools but also help India improve its innovation competitiveness."

Dr Rangan Banerjee, Director, IIT Delhi urged the winning students not to rest on the laurels and that in a rapidly changing world, R&D and innovation is a journey that must be carried everyday with full rigour. 

Mr. Anil Kumar Pokhriyal, CEO, MEPSC said “The idea behind Youth Ideathon was to enthuse, encourage and support bright young minds inclined towards entrepreneurship and innovation. Today, we have identified 10 future job creators.” 

Ms Shivani Singh Kapoor, Founder, ThinkStartup “Youth Ideathon is a unique intervention through which we are building a culture of entrepreneurship in schools. It’s uniqueness lies not just in identifying Top 10 teams, but in our ability to assiduously work day and night with thousands of schools and teachers by offering more than 1000 workshops to how to generate ideas and how to mentor and support young minds on their journey of innovation.”

Mr. Amit Jaiswal, Chief Digital Distribution Officer, Bajaj Allianz Life “We are a firm believer of innovation and children education. That’s why we support Youth Ideathon. We do not see it just as a competition, rather we have worked to make it a process where good ideas continuously gets identified, rises and then a whole support mechanism has been developed in the form of Mentoring, Prototying and Incubation Awards.”

To inspire more & more female students & motivate them to come forward with entrepreneurial ideas, Sheatwork: one of India's fastest-growing platforms dedicated towards women entrepreneurs, sponsored a special award worth Rs. 25000 for the Girl Innovator Award which was conferred a team from Sarvodaya Central Vidyalaya, Thiruvanathapuram. 

Besides these, there were more award categories in the form of Top 10 Team Certificate + 9 Month Incubation with a phased grant of Rs. 1 lakh; Top 25 Teams Certificate + Prototyping Grant of Rs. 10,000; Special Mentors of Innovation Award by CENTA to mentors of Top 25 teams, Top 100 Ideas Certificate + access to Young Ideator program; Top 1000 Certificates; Most Popular Idea award; School of Innovation Award and many more. Participating schools will be conferred with Certificates of Appreciation and Ideas Innovation Trophies.

As a part of this astonishing initiative, more than 1000 school webinars and 10 faculty development workshops were organised pan India. These webinars & workshops subsequently catered to over 3 lakh students and 10000 teachers respectively. This initiative was put through with a vision to help teachers impart entrepreneurial knowledge & aid in the development of a new generation of young entrepreneurs.

The event was backed by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) & the partnering organisations included some of India’s leading corporate houses such as Bajaj Allianz Life, Centre for Energy Environment and Water (CEEW), Cambridge University Press and Assessments, Centre for Teachers Accreditation (CENTA), Sheatwork, IIT Delhi Alumni Association, Technology Information Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC),  National Progressive Schools Conference, TIDES Business Incubator of IIT Roorkee and Unlock.fit

About MEPSC

Management Entrepreneurship Professional Skills Council (MEPSC) is a Horizontal Sector Skills Council formed on 15th December 2015 under the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Govt of India, to bridge the employability gap. MEPSC is to focus on job roles that are sector and industry agnostic. One of the key objectives is to promote entrepreneurship development across the country. 

About ThinkStartup

ThinkStartup (TS) works in the area of entrepreneurship education for the K12 segment. It offers learning content, curriculum design, new-age tools like ideathons and hackathons for school students all across India. It also offers Student Entrepreneurship Lab and Startup Mentors to budding student entrepreneurs in Tier -1 /2 / 3 cities.