Phase I

The top five teams will be invited to ISB Hyderabad for a one week training programme. The aim is to create a sustainable business model out of the business idea. The training has been designed to raise the right questions and provide the teams with the tools to address them. This training will include:

• Critical evaluation with implementation prospective of the business idea by a team of experts

• Workshops on creating the business plan covering modules on marketing, operation management, finance, strategy, valuation, rural marketing, microfinance, negotiation and social entrepreneurship

• Interactive sessions with young entrepreneurs to understand implementation issues

• Sessions by mentoring partners for guidance on financing and technology aspects of the venture

• Revised presentations to mentoring partners and assignment of mentors for Phase II

The pedagogy consists of classroom training, case studies, presentations, meetings and informal interaction between the mentors and the top five teams at the ISB.

Phase II

The second phase will comprise 10 weeks of offline mentoring along similar lines wherein the top five teams will be constantly supported by the mentors in their business plan refinement and execution.

Boot Camp Speakers

Anant Kumar
CEO, LifeSpring Hospitals

Anant Kumar launched the first LifeSpring Hospital in December 2005 as a pilot within Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust (HLFPPT). Prior to heading LifeSpring, Kumar was business head of Social Franchising in HLFPPT. Previously, he served as Programme Manager of the Andhra Pradesh Social Marketing Programme and Regional Manager of HLL. Kumar has a post-graduate diploma in Rural Management (equivalent to an MBA) from the Institute of Rural Management and a post-graduate diploma in Health Care and Hospital Management from Symbiosis Institute. He received his BA from Delhi University. An avid quizzer, Kumar lives in Hyderabad with his wife and son.

Atreya Rayaprolu
Vice President, Intellecap

Atreya Rayaprolu, one of Intellecap’s earliest employees, is focussed on Intellecap’s investment banking services. He has led various engagements with international funds, identifying investment potential in various sectors that positively impact social and rural development. On the sell-side, he works closely with enterprises to develop and maintain long-term strategic advisory relationships on realisation of strategic opportunities, optimisation of capital structure, and maximisation of ‘stakeholder’ value. Rayaprolu also advises clients on structuring social venture capital funds. He has led the ‘India Development Gateway’ initiative, an incubation within Intellecap that focusses on facilitating capital allocation into scalable enterprises with a positive social or environmental impact.

This initiative uses an innovative model of co-investments that attempts to bring a diverse international investor community into a marketplace. Rayaprolu brings with him rich expertise in investment advisory along with a deep understanding of technology. Before joining Intellecap, he was associated with ICICI Bank, structuring and raising offshore funds, focussed on making investments into Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) in emerging economies. He holds a B.Tech and M.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and a PGPM from the Indian School of Business.

Dheeraj Batra
Venture Director, Innosight Ventures

Dheeraj Batra transitioned to Innosight Ventures from Innosight's US consulting arm based in Watertown, MA, where worked on projects in several industries including consumer products, financial services, and automotive. His work has had a particular focus on utilizing Innosight's Jobs-to-be-Done methodology to develop and evaluate new ideas as well as on applying Innosight's IP to position products with a view to disrupting the market.

Prior to joining Innosight, Batra worked as a Consultant at Adventis, a technology-focused strategy consulting firm, and also spent a year working with a non profit organisation in Philadelphia where he helped develop a microfinance offering, secure funding, and set up a community technology centre. He has also worked as a project manager at Grey Advertising's Interactive arm leading the development and roll-out of online advertising campaigns for clients in the Personal Care and FMCG industries.

Batra holds an MBA in Strategic Management from the Wharton Business School and BS degrees in both Finance and Computer Science from the University of Maryland.

Ganesh Rengaswamy
Vice President and India Country Director, Unitus

Ganesh Rengaswamy has more than a decade of experience in executing firm- level strategies and undertaking independent revenue and growth initiatives for investing firms, Fortune 1000 clients, start-ups, and high-growth companies. He has global experience in venture capital, growth investing, and entrepreneurial and operating roles across consumer technology, financial services, internet/mobile, and retail IT services. Prior to joining Unitus in 2009, Rengaswamy was the Co-Founder of Travelguru.com—the online travel leader in hotels and vacations in India and South Asia— and launched India Investments for Greylock Partners, one of the oldest top-tier venture capital firms in the US.

Previously, at Infosys Technologies, Rengaswamy managed mission- critical engagements for Fortune 500 clients and helped lead proposals of over USD 100 million. Before Infosys, he managed a private investment fund, where his most successful investments included Infosys and HDFC Bank. Rengaswamy is a frequent speaker in several entrepreneurial and investing forums including TiE Chapters, IITs and IIMs. He holds a bachelors degree in Engineering from IT-BHU/ IIT-BHU (India), an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a graduate degree in Finance and Systems Strategy from IIM-Calcutta. He is also a management advisor to several start-up businesses.

K Ramachandran
Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management and Clinical Professor, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad

Professor K Ramachandran is the Thomas Schmidheiny Chair Professor of Family Business and Wealth Management at the Indian School of Business. He specialises in the areas of entrepreneurship, strategy and family business and has over 33 years of experience as an academician. He obtained a PhD from the Cranfield School of Management, UK in 1986 on a comparative study of the small enterprise policies of Japan, UK and India. Professor Ramachandran’s research on family business, entrepreneurship and strategy has been published extensively in reputed Indian and overseas journals. His consulting experience includes areas such as family business governance, professionalisation, succession planning, strategic planning, and identification of new opportunities for growth, corporate entrepreneurship and turn around strategies in family and non-family environments. He has written several management cases, and has conducted training programmes on strategic management and entrepreneurship for entrepreneurs and senior and top managers. He has been on various advisory committees of the Government of India, World Bank, Securities and Exchange Board of India on entrepreneurship and strategy.

Mrinalini Shastry
Independent Consultant for Social Impact

After studying corporate law, Mrinalini Shastry majored in Strategic Marketing in MBA at the Indian School of Business. She has been working the social space for the past five years in various roles right from programme conception, development and fund raising to hands on operations in the area of livelihoods skills training to developing sustainable systems for monitoring and studying the social impact of development work. She has worked with Dr Reddys Foundation and IndusTree Crafts Pvt Ltd., India’s leading natural fibre manufacturer. She was the chairperson for the audit panel of the Centre for Social Initiative and Management (CSIM).She now works independently and has conducted various programmes with Centre for Social Innovation and Management and is actively involved in bringing social accounting to India.

Monika Shah
Portfolio Associate, Acumen

As a Portfolio Associate on the India team, Monika Shah has focussed on work dealing with potential investees in the areas of Health and Nutrition. Monika came to Acumen Fund from Bain & Company, where she worked in the technology, private equity and healthcare sectors out of the San Francisco and New Delhi offices. Prior to Bain, she had experience working with Human Rights Watch and in the international operations department of Intercon Security Systems, a company with operations in Latin America and Africa. Monika graduated with high honours as a Regents Scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied Applied Mathematics.

Sachin Malhan
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Inclusive Planet

Sachin Malhan is an alumnus of the National Law School in Bangalore. After a year's stint at Amarchand Mangaldas, the nation's leading corporate law firm, he took the path of entrepreneurship. Since then, he has co-founded two industry-leading companies aside from Inclusive Planet. His first venture was Law School Tutorials, India's leading law test prep outfit with centres in more than 50 cities. It is a case study at the Indian School of Business and was acquired by leading edu-corporate Career Launcher in 2004. Malhan then co-founded Rainmaker Training and Recruitment which he led till March 2008. Rainmaker is a market leader in talent management services for the legal industry, and an emerging force in legal training and industry knowledge services. He continues to serve as a Director on the Rainmaker board.

S Sivakumar
Chief Executive, Agri Business Division, ITC

S Sivakumar is the Chief Executive of the Agri Businesses Division of ITC Limited, India. He has conceptualised the path-breaking e- Choupal model and is spearheading its roll out across the country. He is also a Director on the Boards of NABARD, ITC Infotech India Ltd., Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, IRMA, Centre for Collective Development, and Charities Aid Foundation India. He is on the Executive Committee of India’s National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) and on the Private Sector Committee of CGIAR. He is an active member of the management committees of various industry bodies and several taskforces of Government of India.

Topper of the Class of 1983 from the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), Sivakumar served a farmers' cooperative for six years before joining ITC in 1989. He is an avid reader and a keen music enthusiast.