IRIS’ 2015: Captured, unconventionally

This year IRIS, our very own Management and Cultural fest, incorporated a number of off-beat events into the mainstream, from de-mystifying mind mapping tools to playing poker with prudence, from envisaging social entrepreneurship to laughing out loud with stand-up comedy, IRIS’15 had it all. Let us take a sneak-peek into some of our unique events.

Kalpavriksha

Making its big debut with humble origins and mammoth seed funding, Kalpavriksha certainly was the cynosure at IRIS 2015. The social B-Plan competition powered by Sir Dorabji Tata Trust funded INR5 lacs to the most innovative, implementable and impact driven idea. The event reflected the wave of growing social responsibility and witnessed social enterprises from all over India, pitch their idea for change. ‘Help Us Green’ a social enterprise based out of Kanpur that preserves rivers around Kanpur by recycling waste from places of worship into reusable green lifestyle products were adjudged winners.

Ashwamedha

Traditionally, the most coveted event at IRIS, Ashwamedha was won by Matthews Matthews (hearty congratulations). The final round witnessed 3 potential leaders who could foster the future, face probably the most grappling and nerve wreaking interviews of their lives with a theatrical element of the spot light on . The judges impulsively pulled off crowd winners with witty wordplay and provoking political power play, keeping the audience and contestants gripped to seats. To those who seek to conquer Ashwamedha next year, here’s a tip, know thy constituency.

Poker Nights

The Online-gaming partner of IRIS 2015, www.spartanpoker.com, kept night life glowing, turning students into gamblers. While the gamblers dilemma being sleep v/s poker play, the latter took precedence over the prior. Spartan Poker, with no real cash, engaged students till early dawn simulating Mess 1 as Monte Carlo, with calls, folds and an infrequent straight that won it all.Spartan Poker clearly made its returns on investments (sponsorship) by creating learning experiences in poker, a new found love for many and were generous enough to give redemption vouchers worth INR500 and goodies to join their digital platform. For the pros, this event suddenly turned Planet-I into paradise, while for the amateurs all-in was the ideal route out.

Salsa Workshop

The Salsa workshop organized by Bazinga let the Latina in you come alive. While keeping up with the beats, memorizing steps and most importantly synchronizing movements,this workshop integrated music and (e)motion. With the tempo of music rising, hand-eye and probably foot coordination deteriorating, there was laughter in the air if not in-sync rhythm. The participants thoroughly enjoyed themselves, in a mildly embarrassing yet dance-enriching experience. Let’s hope that the next time the title track of Bang Bang plays, the participants put on their dancing shoes and get grooving.

TVF

The most anticipated event, was the Pitchers preachers, The Viral Fever. This crowd puller and ‘bookmyshow’ publicized event partly fulfilled the humor quotient at planet-I. While the expectations were jovially high, their performance undoubtedly let laughter loose, however TVF didn’t do their pre-reads well as they visibly lacked preparation on the ‘newness’ quotient.Rummaging between rowdies and repeats, there was too much Q-tiyapa. Those who hadn’t already seen it all, got their money’s worth. While those who had seen it all, can now flaunt the fact that they’ve seen it all…live.

Records broken

This year, there were no Guinness World Records in the making, The IRIS MEDIA team and the Coordinators did an outstanding job on social media platforms, with a 100% response rate and 2 hour response time, they managed to reach out to 132,313 people on Facebook and it’s still counting. While on campus a flooded mailbox, over the last two weeks was courtesy IRIS. Their sincere apologies but all they intended to do was to save some paper.

i5 Summit: Why wait when you can Start-Up?

Joining the Startup bandwagon yet renewing it with entrepreneurial wisdom, IIM Indore in collaboration with IIT Indore successfully organized the i5 Summit- with their fivefold aim to Ideate.Innovate.Inspire.Induce.Invest.

The summit brought together pioneers of the startup generation to share their experiences, expectations and enthusiasm through a series of panel discussions , keynote speeches and workshops .Notable speakers who extended their insights included Kris Gopalakrishnan, Co-Founder, Infosys, Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, CEO, Zensar, Ronnie Screwala, Founder ,UTV Motion Pictures and many others.They covered intriguing areas ranging from M-commerce vs E-commerce, Growth Hacking, , Digital Media Marketing, App Development, Product Engineering, 360 degree on funding, Customer Acquisition, Business model Canvassing and Business Development with an Enterprise.

The heart of the summit however was Venture-I, a Venture Plan competition, where in 23 startups battled it out with a perfect pitch to prominent venture capitalists to win a grand prize of Rs15 lakh in addition to the opportunity to get their ideas funded. The startups that received funding at Venture-I were Bingage, Hate2Wait, Planmyad, SponsifyMe and Gamezop. All in all the summit showcased the robust growth in India’s entrepreneurial climate. To redeem the social sector, the TATA Trust, in collaboration with Head Held High and StartupWave, held the Tata i5 competition wherein teams spelled out their business ideas in the agriculture, health and education domain. This event was won by Team Freak Machans.

To summarize with the secret ingredients that lead to a startup’s success, Ronnie Screwala charismatically revealed his 8Cs approach of Clarity, Conviction, Confidence, Communication, Curiosity, Collaboration, Culture and Choice.