Reliance White Knight, the flagship event of Backwaters, is another Business Plan competition that we organize. This has more to do with social entrepreneurship.

Getting funded in this kind of event seems to be quite natural. In 2007 year event, few of the startups like: HelloIntern, WebVastra were funded.

Thanks,
Raja

There is ISBA - Indian STEP and Business Incubators association which is a National event that has a gathering of pan indian Business Incubators - http://isba.in

The first edition was at Hyde and the second edition is slated for Feb 08, in Technopark, Trivandrum.

My personal experience at ISBA - Gave huge networking opportunity to all the national incubators, department of science and technology innovation heads and a host of other people - Not exactly the VC/Angel thingy but the step before that is done here. One can find incubators from IIMS, IITS to engineering colleges across the country - who are ready to take in startups under their fold, seed fund and support with infra. I personally suggest this as a good place to get a startup incubated, as its heads of all these incubators who participated at the Hyde event.

FICCI organizes an India Innovates competetion - This years edition was sponsored by Lockheed Martin. The event is a six month long process where initial applications are screened, then called for interviews which is judeged by University of Texas Profs - and a 45 day intensive coaching class to build a business plan.

Our Personal Experience - Would serve as a good PR story if you make it a grade. Nothing much beyond that.

The Tie ISB Connect personally was not a great event at this years edition. There were all sorts of entreprenuers - from idea stage guys to angel funded to series A guys all on a single platform. Served as a good networking event but nothing much really happens on the business plan show case and other verticals that happens here.

I’ve uploaded some pics at http://www.tieisb.mobshare.in with VC’s and Angels just in case anybody wants to see the faces behind the names like Mahesh Murthy, Nikhil etc

Technopark Trivandrum organizes a National Level Startup Competetion, and this years edition was just over a month back. This is one of the rare events open only to college student startups and they had particiapation from 24 teams, 8 states. No clue as to what happens to the winners.

I’ve met Kiruba and heard from many other places that Proto is a really cool event. Havent been there myself but i think that is really a hot not to be missed event.

Apart from the Nasscom Innovation Awards that you have mentioned, there is a seperate category of awards called the Nassom list of India’s 100 Innovative Startups.

I’m pretty much sure there are more events than these in IIM’s and IIT’s but i’m not sure how the showcase of the technology leads to anything other than what its is meant to do - just “showcase” - Not sure if the startup gets any help to take the next few steps or the buzz fizzles out after the event is over.