Eureka! is the biggest Business Plan Competition in India and one of the Top Five in the Asia-Oceanic region in terms of participation, prizes and resources. It is intended as a platform to encourage youth from across the globe to flesh out their ideas in business terms and form global enterprises that combine technology,vision and business acumen.
Over the years, Eureka!'s unique format comprising mentoring with a transparent judging process has become a model for the similar competitions held in India and elsewhere. Moreover Eureka! as a competiton has evolved a great deal over the years to accomodate the changing preferences of a budding entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurship as a concept is quite recent in India.
When Eureka! was first launched at Techfest 99 with the idea of having a different kind of an event, entrepreneurship as a word probably sounded like something out of a Mastermind India Trivia Quiz. Over the years the situation has undergone a sea change & the focus has shifted from dollar signs in the eyes to talks of networking, incubation and VC funding.
This increasing confidence of budding entrepreneurs has been reflected in the changing profile of Eureka!. Eureka! has now evolved from a competition for ideas with business potential to a professional business enterprise competition. The phenomenal growth of Eureka! as a competition has mirrored the gradual evolution of the budding Indian entrepreneurs.
Eureka! today is a brand in itself. Apart from being the biggest business plan competition in India and one of the top five in the Asia-pacific region, Eureka! also holds a position of respect in the highly competitive arena of global business plan competitions. This is reflected in the invitations which Eureka!06 winners received to prestigious competitions as Singapore's "Global Entropolis" and UC Berkeley Competition.
Eureka!s evolution is reflected in the advanced mentoring and the new phase of Eureka! in which team is guided properly after winning the competition and have more opportunities to contact with VC s and Incubators . Hence it would not be vainglorious to say that EUREKA! has truly become the benchmark against which others compare themselves.