The end of the current semester saw the142 students that had taken up the CIE Entrepreneurship courses - Level 1 and Level 1 - presenting their startup ideas at the Final Pitch sessions to an eminent jury panel. The eminent Jury on the 19th Nov, consisted of Sumeet Verma, Director - Strategic Initiatives at Intel India, Sruthi Kannan, Head of CISCO LaunchPad Startup Accelerator and Poornima Shenoy, Co-founder & CEO, The GAIN. The 20th Nov session was for Level 2 and we had V M Kumar, Start-up Consultant and Mentor at GDC-IIT Madras and Harsha Chaturvedi, COO of EOX Vantage. For the 21st Nov session, the jury panel consisted of John Kuruvilla, Chief Mentor, Brigade REAP (the only Real Estate Accelerator in Asia) and Varad Krishna (MD - Induct India, MD - 100 Open Start-ups). The Final Pitch at CIE gives student an opportunity to present their pitch to an eminent jury panel and get inputs and feedback for their startup idea and entrepreneurial journey. This is just one of the differentiators of the course offerings from CIE at PES University.

The Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GDC) at IIT-Madras completed the seventh cohort under its flagship I-NCUBATE programme recently. GDC has benefited more than 65 startups, enhancing the entrepreneurial capabilities of over 360 participants from various institutions including IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry, Pune University, KJ Somaiya College, Mumbai, PES University, Bengaluru, and Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.

The 2020 Hult Prize Challenge was building startups that have a positive impact on our planet with every dollar earned. The team FUZE of Jaidev G, Kirthan Sanjay and Srivatsan H that focused on reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by converting some of it into useful forms of fuel qualified for the regionals to be held in March 2020. The finals will be held in the US in Sep 2020. The eminent jury included Bindu Sastry of Mauverick, Gautham Khot of Brigade REAP, Ramesh Phatak, angel investor, Shobana Rajagopal of Microsoft, Suraj Chawla of Swissnex and Suresh Narasimha of Co-Create Ventures. Twenty four teams competed for the top spot. The first runners up team SupHerb of Arjun M, Prateek Nayak, Danish M E, and Ruthwik H M presented several uses of hemp and make eco-friendly plastic. The second runner up team Smart Mesh of Archana B, Bhargavi G, and Isha P, planned to make a mesh fitted with a Metal-Organic Framework (MOF), that can absorb most of the harmful carbon dioxide emissions. The Hult Prize Foundation, supported by UN and Bill Clinton Foundation is a global movement of young people envisioning a brighter future in the world around them. This competition aims to encourage students to create dynamic and disruptive startups. PES student body supported by the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (CIE) hosted the 1st Hult Prize Challenge 2020 (On-campus round) at PES University on Nov 16, 2019.

Prof. Sathya Prasad was on the jury panel for the finals of Smart India Hackathon (Hardware) 2019. The hackathon organised by MHRD, AICTE, i4c and Persistent Systems, is based on an open innovation model for identifying new and disruptive technology innovations to solve the challenges faced in our country. The hackathon was held in Ciombatore on July 25-26, 2019. Prof Sathya Prasad heads Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) in PES University.

The brainstorming event saw PES University students of engineering and design, competing with peers globally for real-life implementation of innovations selected by Honda. Connected cars based on concepts of 5G communication, autonomous car and ride sharing, and emotion-based service provisioning are changing the ways cars are being used. Xinova on behalf of Honda conducted the event to seek innovative ideas from student innovators on application of emotion-based personalized services for the connected car. The interactive session saw the participants come up with inventive ideas. Experts from Xinova, Chris Buntel, Issac Pek and Ramakrishnan Vaidyanathan did a rapid fire screening and guided them on how to select-reject-improve ideas. The participants then submitted their solutions highlighting why Honda should select their solution. Xinova was appreciative of the ideas presented by the students in a short span of time. Xinova is a collective of 12000+ innovators working with large companies to help them solve their research and product development challenges. The day long Ideathon was held on July 14 on the campus.

Students participated in a two-day Workshop combined with one-day Hackathon to learn and implement smart solutions using IoT at PES University. Over 60 students participated in the event held from June 22 to 24, 2018 in CIE Studio at PES University. This program provided a unique hands-on experience of sensors and actuators, edge computing and cloud environments. The program was conducted by Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), Center for Information Security, Forensics and Cyber Resilience (IFSCR), Computer Science and Electronics & Communication Departments in association with FluxGen Technologies. On Day 1, participants worked with sensors and actuators, interfacing circuits, programmable controllers and associated hardware and tested their programming basics working on 9 projects. Day 2 covered basic communication protocols, wireless communication, Cloud setup & communication, cloud Analytics and Android app development and systems integration working with 5 projects. Day 3 tested the skills of the students as they competed in a 3-stage Hackathon solving real problems.

Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Makerspace, the place to ideate and bring ideas to life, provides the setting for people, ideas and action to come together. The space was inaugurated by Dr. K.N.B. Murthy, Vice Chancellor and Prof. Ajoy Kumar, COO, PES University. CIE Bootcamp, a residential weeklong experiential learning session was held for students to gain insights into the landscape of tech entrepreneurship and take an idea to a pitch using contemporary methodologies and frameworks like design thinking, effectuation, Business Model Canvas and Agile. Eight teams comprising of 4th and 6th semester Engineering students from PES University presented ideas, qualifying for the final pitch, which had Dr S Raghunath, Prof at IIM-Bangalore as the chief guest and juror. The first prize, sponsored by Vantage Agora, was won by “End-to-end Energy Management start-up” ideated by the team of Shrushti, Kalandhar, Mohammed Sadiq and Sumanth. Student volunteers from the Management studies and Hospitality programs at PESU assisted in the smooth conduct of the Bootcamp. The event was held from May 28 to June 3, 2018 on the PES University campus.