BITS Pilani’s startup accelerator Conquest hosts its Demo Day in Bangalore

• Conquest is a student-run startup accelerator run by 30 engineering students of BITS Pilani.
• It started as a B-plan competition by the founders of GreyOrange during their college days at BITS Pilani.
• The 7-week accelerator programme will finally culminate in a Demo Day.

In India, the era of fast-moving tech startups was ushered in post the 2000s, with the launch of smartphones, cheaper access to the Internet, and positive regulations in the space. Since then, the startup ecosystem has undergone a phase of swift development, seeing multiple cycles in an extremely compressed amount of time.

We are now seeing the ecosystem accelerate its pace of growth as it races to reach the same levels as the startup worlds in the USA and Europe. The global interest in the ‘Indian Dream’ has never been greater, with Jio, UPI, and ONDC generating the thrust to justify this trust.

Contributing and speeding this growth is Conquest, a student-run startup accelerator run by 30 engineering students of BITS Pilani who are striving to create value for early-stage startup founders.

Conquest started as a B-plan competition by the founders of GreyOrange during their college days at BITS Pilani. Over the years, it pivoted into a full-fledged startup accelerator model inspired by the likes of Y Combinator. It is run by a group of students from BITS Pilani with the purpose of providing value to the startups who come to Conquest; by solving crucial problems like fundraising, mentorship, networking, and scaling which these startups face as they step into the market.

It has successfully disbursed equity-less grants worth over ₹60 lakhs in the past two years, thus solving the problem of equity dilution for early-stage startup founders.

The exhaustive 7-week accelerator programme will finally culminate in the Demo Day, which is the grand finale of the entire accelerator programme; where the 15 most promising startups (out of the 2,000 registered) will fly into Bangalore and pitch themselves to a jury consisting of top VCs, angel investors, representatives from partners like Nexus Venture Partners, Matrix Partners and other prominent stakeholders of the ecosystem.

The Demo Day will be held on August 28, at Shangri-La in Bangalore and will be witnessed by founders and investment partners of some of India’s leading startups and representatives from the government.

Speakers cutting across domains like Sumit Gwalani of Fi, Vishesh Khurana from Shiprocket, Rahul Sharma of Zetwerk, and Srikanth Velamakanni of Fractal.ai, Ashish Singhal of Coinswitch among others; will engage in insightful panel discussions.

If you wish to be a part of the Demo Day, register directly from here: https://lu.ma/demo-day-conquest22

This year, Conquest hosted over 100 experienced founders, VPs, and CXOs from Meesho, HBO, BigBasket and more as mentors. They provided over 350 mentoring sessions to the Conquest’22 cohort. It also has a large resource pool of partners like AWS, Notion and Freshworks

Conquest is backed by some of the ecosystem’s biggest names, with WestBridge Capital as the title sponsor — a highly experienced investment firm managing over $5.6 billion across India and South Asia. It is also backed by SolRazr, the first decentralized developer ecosystem for Solana as the Web3 Track Sponsor.

Conquest also has IDFC FIRST Bank as the exclusive banking partner, which provides an exhaustive suite of products and services for startups. Aditya Birla Ventures is the venture partner, and it backs new-age, high-growth businesses having the potential to emerge as industry leaders; and EY as the general sponsor, which is one of the world’s largest professional networks providing consulting, assurance, tax, and transaction services.

Conquest also partnered with WeWork Labs as an innovation partner, which is a global acceleration platform for early-stage startups, SMBs, investors, and enterprises offering access to capital, education, mentorship, cost-saving credits and premium collaborative workspaces for the founders in Conquest 2022.

Venus Communiti, which is a Bangalore-based venture focusing on providing an all-in-one immersive living and working experience for entrepreneurs and professionals, is also the startup experience partner this year.

Another initiative which the Conquest team conceptualized this year was the India Portfolio Summit, a weekend-long summit that chronicled the growth of the Indian startup ecosystem back from the 1980s. The summit was a grand success and saw some of the greatest entrepreneurial minds, including the likes of Aadit Palicha, Piyush Shah, Vibhor Jain and Dipti Tandon among others come together to talk about their journeys

Here is a glimpse at this year's cohort of Conquest-

PredictRAM DeFi (https://predictram.com)

PredictRAM’s Risk Management Protocol uses AI.M, CI and Web 3 technologies that created event specific multi asset-backed traded tokens ETT to mitigate individual portfolio risk at low cost.

StreamMoney (https://www.streammoney.finance/)

StreamMoney is building a utility transfer protocol that transfers conditional ownership of NFTs without collateral. It facilitates P2P rentals of NFTs, NFT ticketing, memberships, and subscriptions (Live on Solana Devnet).

Fragments (prev. Gullak Party) (https://gullak.party/)

Gullak Party enables diligent investors to set up investment DAOs for purchase-based investing with retailers.

Statlogic (http://www.statlogic.io/)

Statlogic is a deep-tech company developing artificial intelligence-driven solutions in the field of animal husbandry and dairying.

Green Tiger Mobility Private Limited (http://www.greentiger.in/)

It is India’s first company to offer a dual powertrain on two-wheelers.

Debound (http://debound.in/)

Debound, is making a whole new category in the edtech space by cleverly integrating the hottest extracurricular skills from their palette right into school-level academics.

Enpointe (http://www.enpointe.in/)

"enpointe" allows influencers to authenticate products by giving them a virtual storefront on a collective platform.

OriginKonnect (https://originkonnect.in/)

OriginKonnect is taking a holistic approach in simplifying global agri-food trade by building a technology B2B supply chain platform for agri-food exporters and importers.

FreightFox (https://www.freightfox.ai/)

With FreightFox, customers (manufacturing enterprises) experience better control, visibility and data-driven decision-making for logistics procurement and operations.

UNINO Healthcare Private Limited (http://www.uninohealthcare.com/)

UNINO has designed and developed patented technology for a chest drain management system called PleuraGoh®.

Euphotic Labs (http://www.letsnosh.io/)

Nosh is an AI-based home robot that makes cooking hassle-free and enables consumers to eat healthy and freshly cooked home food conveniently.

Scrollify (https://scrollify.in/)

Scrollify is a bite-sized content platform, they are using trendy bite-sized content to create a platform for upskilling for industry professionals and students.

Xebra Biztech LLP (https://xebra.in)

Xebra is a SaaS ERP for B2B MSMEs that provides real-time actionable to entrepreneurs from their business performance.

Daffodil Health (https://www.daffodilhealth.com/)

Daffodil Health is helping children with special needs and their families by solving the large demand-supply gap in the healthcare ecosystem by pioneering Parent Mediated Therapies.

Aiverse (http://www.aiverse.co.in/)

Aiverse is a deep tech ecosystem enabler on the blockchain. It is dedicated to the collaboration, creation, and dommerce of deep tech.

Disclaimer: This article is published in partnership with Conquest, BITS Pilani