IEDC Summit 2017: India’s Largest Student Entrepreneur Event

KOCHI:
Influential technologists, leading innovators and key decision-makers will interact with more than 3,000 student-entrepreneurs from across Kerala at ‘IEDC Summit 2017’, the largest gathering of its kind in India, to be held here on Saturday and a showcase for the incredible potential and production of the state’s startup ecosystem.
Organised by Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), the day-long event at Adlux International Convention & Exhibition Centre will also mark the first time global tech conglomerates such as Google and Facebook will share space and network with startups and aspiring ‘technopreneurs’ in Kerala. Google India Vice-President and Managing Director Rajan Anandan will deliver a keynote address, while Facebook will launch its first Developer Circle – a locally-organised knowledge-sharing community for developers – in Kochi.
As well, Kerala will witness its first ‘Bitcoin Airdrop’, joining in a worldwide initiative that sees cities, Fintech organisations and educational institutions in 11 regions mine and distribute free bitcoins to grow their local digital currency communities.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will be the chief guest at the summit, which will see participation from around 200 Innovation Entrepreneurship Development Centres (IEDCs) – small incubators set up at engineering, technical, management and arts and science colleges to help students pursue innovative ideas and embrace the entrepreneurial spirit.
More than 50 student prototypes will be unveiled at a ‘Project Expo’ while specially constructed robots, designed and built in house by college students, battle each other in a live ‘Robowar’ competition. There will also be live demos of AR/VR devices, seminars, mentoring and pitching stations and panel discussions by a host of prominent personalities, including Union telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan and Kerala Electronics and IT Secretary M. Sivasankar.
“Each IEDC hosts hundreds of students. KSUM supports around 193 IEDCs across the state by providing these students with opportunities to upgrade their technical skillsets and develop the leadership and business acumen required to succeed in their individual entrepreneurial journeys. Students with product ideas are taught to turn these into prototypes at the Fab Labs in the state. It comes as little surprise then that these IEDCs have helped create around 200 startups in Kerala,” KSUM CEO Dr Gopinath said.
Vaitheeswaran K., referred to the as ‘father of e-commerce in India’, will present a keynote speech on ‘Failing to Succeed: The Story of India's first e-commerce company’. Scott O’Brien, co-Founder and CEO of Sydney-based startup Humense, will speak on ‘Creating VR content’ and demonstrate the capabilities of volumetric video and VR technologies.
ICFOSS Director Dr Jayasankar Prasad and a host of tech luminaries, including prominent angel investor Nagaraja Prakasam, former director of executive engagement at Microsoft India and founder of the Jackfruit365 initiative James Joseph and Dentcare Dental lab founder and Managing Director John Kuriakose, will also speak at the event.
There will be two panel discussions titled ‘Identify the problem, Explore the opportunity, build your Enterprise/Startup’ and ‘Entrepreneur is by choice not by chance’, lightning talks, power discussions, a Startup Expo and Incubator Expo as also parallel sessions on future technologies, business modeling, design thinking, among other activity tracks.