Planning Entrepreneurship Oriented Events - Learning from TNIGC 2019

What is TNIGC?

TNIGC stands for Tamil Nadu Innovation Grand Challenge. Like Vibrant Gujarat Startup Summit hosts a grand challenge for all the startups to showcase their uniqueness and talent, TNIGC is a similar platform for startups based out of Tamil Nadu. It is an initiative by Entrepreneurship Development &Innovation Institute of Tamil Nadu.

TNIGC 2019 supports the entrepreneurs by providing exposure, mentorship; incubation support and government grant money. EDII i.e. Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute promote such events that support startups and helps them build and grow in an active startup atmosphere. The target sectors for the event were Agriculture, Manufacturing, Logistics, Education, Retail, Smart Cities and so on.

The startup challenge was divided into 2 steps:

1. Sprint — For continuous 48 hours, the teams were supposed to improvise their prototype with the help of mentors that the participants were going to showcase in the Grand Challenge. It was conducted from 15th-17th Feb’2019. The selected teams were then selected for Bootcamp.

2. Bootcamp — It was an area dedicated to enhancing the business perspective of the participants through the workshops. It was conducted on 22nd and 23rd Feb’2019 in Chennai.

3. Pitchfest — Pitchfest was the final step where the teams selected in the previous round were supposed to showcase their final products and pitch their product and idea in front of a jury.

The final stage accumulated all the knowledge that the participants gained from the mentorship and workshops in both a technical and business perspective. The winners were awarded grant money of 5 Lakhs along with government provided incubation support.

How Hubilo helped TNIGC 2019?

Hubilo was provided with the great opportunity to be an event-tech partner of TNIGC 2019 and provide the event technology services to them. Here are a few of the solutions that we provided:

- Event Registrations — Hubilo provided the event registration solution to the TNIGC 2019 organizers for a hassle-free registration process. Two kinds of tickets were created for TNIGC sprint registrations, one being paid and other was free. The attendees could directly fill in the form for Sprint registrations for TNIGC and buy the tickets.

- Check-in — The event organizers opted to go for a smooth check-in process for the event i.e. for TNIGC Sprint. With Hubilo’s simple check-ins solution integrated with the QR code system, the onsite check-in was a trouble-free process. The participants were sent their custom QR codes on their event apps which were scanned at the entry point of the venue. Participant check-in was also acknowledged with a custom sent message/notification to them.

- Event App — Mobile event app was one of the major solutions that Hubilo provided to TNIGC 2019 event. With the help of mobile event apps, several features were integrated which helped attendees on site to engage, chat, meet, tweet, post simultaneously from a single platform provided to them. Here are some of the few features that were selected for the TNIGC event:

1. Schedule — The detailed schedule compromised of all the activities that were lined up on the Sprint Day, Bootcamp Day and the final Pitchfest. On day 1 i.e. 15th Feb the inauguration started at 5.30 pm with the entire event ending with the winner announcement at 1.30pm on 24th Feb’2019. With the schedule available on hand of every participant in their smartphones, there was no hassle at the venue regarding the timings and the sessions.

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2. Mentors section — Mentors section was a custom addition to the event app of TNIGC 2019 as it had its own importance. Mentors play a crucial role starting from the Sprint event until the pitching session, as they impacted the startup teams and encouraged them by sharing their insights and knowledge on how to showcase their product and startup idea; how to showcase the idea with a business mind; and how to improvise on the products that the teams came up with technically.

Mentors pave a way for the startup teams to overcome the basic challenges and develop their business ethics and team strength to win the Grand Challenge contest and prize money.

3. Event Feed — Just like any social media feed, Hubilo’s event app also has an event feed section which any attendee/participant can check and be up to date with what’s trending at the venue or what is going on in the networking area and so on. People can share links, status, photos, videos and information related to the event on the feed.

4. Gallery — Attendees aka participants can share their moments with all the event members by uploading images and view them in the gallery. The fun parts of the events, the night-long sprint activities or the winning cheer and glee of the Winners were captured and uploaded in the image gallery.

5. Tweet Wall — Tweet wall was integrated with the event app by displaying all the trending tweets which were using the hashtag #tnigc or have tagged the social account of TNIGC in their tweets! Social media presence and tweets help encourage the participants and build their confidence for the final big challenge.

6. Networking Platform — Hubilo’s Networking Community Platform integrated in-app provide a multitude of features to the attendees/participants at the event.

The main aim of integrating a networking community is to maximize the attendee engagement at the event. Since the focus of the Startup challenge was to make the team and the participants mingle with the startup crowd so they can be a part of the startup community, a separate mentor section was added wherein they could contact and connect with different mentors.

Apart from then the general features of the networking platform that the TNIGC app had been: Business Cards, Push Notifications, in-app chat, and meetings.

So, the attendees could easily connect with one another using the attendee profile section, view the profile, and send a chat message to start a conversation, share their business cards or event request to set up a meeting with them in the available slots.

- Analytics: Any event organizer requires the event analytics to analyze the success of their event and to measure the event ROI. Here are a few analytics of the TNIGC 2019 event. 6 forms were created in which 3 were ticket forms and 3 were simple forms which had total 116 submissions. The check-ins at the Sprint meetings were 71 and total app downloads were 93.

Takeaways from TNIGC 2019

TNIGC 2019 was an incredibly planned and executed entrepreneurship oriented event, which gave a platform and chance for several teams to showcase their startup products and ideas and pitch it to the jury. The touch of event technology at TNIGC 2019 made it stand out and here are the following takeaways or learnings one received from the event:

1. Networking is a path to hassle-free attendee engagement — Event Networking is a key ingredient to measure attendee engagement and ROI. Hubilo’s Event Networking Platform facilitates ease of access to all the attendee’s profiles so that one attendee can connect to any other attendee if they want to discuss a business or startup related opportunity.  The direct method of in-app chats and setting up meetings with fellow attendees simplifies the task to go and network with several present attendees one by one.

2. Event Tech helps simplify the entrepreneurship oriented events — With a great entrepreneurship oriented event having a grand challenge powered with event technology helps build a strong digital presence overall.

Event technology helps organizers to simplify the execution of the event, make it paperless by introducing the concept of event apps at their event, to receive the detailed event analytics that later on helps them to figure out the event success and calculate the event ROI. Implementing the event planning process and strategy digitally using event technology simplifies the task of event organizers.

3. Mobile Event app is a bridge of connection between mentors and participants — All the participants for a startup grand challenge need supervision and guidance from mentors. Event app was an easy link between various teams and mentors at TNIGC event. Mobile Event Apps helped the newbies of the start-up community to interact and engage with the fellow members as well as mentors. Mentor profiles helped the participants in searching for them easily and meeting them at the venue.

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