Tag Archives: contest

Contest: What is the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

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(Update: Check out all the great advice in the comments section)

Getting the right kind of mentorship is a very important factor in the success of most successful people. Yet, unfortunately, we often see youngsters not getting the right kind of advice, either because they’re too shy to approach potential mentors, or don’t know whom to approach, or think they know everything. To highlight the importance of getting mentors, we’re asking our readers to give examples of great mentorship – by telling us what was the best piece of career advice you’ve ever gotten. And, if possible, mention the name of the mentor too. Post it as a comment to this article, and we will highlight the best ones in an upcoming article on PuneTech and elsewhere.

The contest ends on Monday, 5th September 2011 at 6pm.

Update: Amit Naik and Lokesh Parakh are the winners of the contest. They get a MentorEdge T-shirt, and a free ticket to a MentorEdge Pune session if they’re interested. Actually Anil Paranjape’s entry was the number 1 choice of the judges, but he does not win anything since he is already a mentor at MentorEdge.

Note: The contest (described below) is over, but you can continue adding advice, because good advice is forever…

To encourage you to help with this cause, MentorEdge, a program for connecting startups to successful mentors, will be giving away 2 T-Shirts to the best entries and free mentoring as part of the next event.

MentorEdge is an initiative of the Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-Ahmedabad, and is an event that happens every few months in many cities in India, including Pune. The basic idea is that senior, experienced people from the industry, especially those with experience relevant to startups, are invited to be mentors, and startups apply to get face-to-face, one-on-one slots with the mentors, so they can get advice, feedback, or schedule further follow-up meetings with specific mentors. The event usually lasts half a day and each startup ends up meeting at least 5 or 6 mentors.

The next event in Pune is on 10th September. If you are a founder of startup and been generating revenue for more than 6 months, you should definitely consider getting some mentorship through MentorEdge. For a list of mentors, see their website. To apply look here

Whether you’re interested in MentorEdge or not, and whether you’re interested in a T-shirt or not, please leave a comment with your advice on the best advice you’ve ever received.

InEnCy – The Energy Efficiency Business Plan Contest

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IndiaCo Advisors, a Pune-based investment management firm has announced InEnCy, a business plan competition focusing on energy efficiency.

Here is the pitch:

Energy efficiency, a prime factor in India’s economic growth and sustenance, requires innovative ideas converging into practice. For the purpose of promoting Energy Efficiency ideas into viable business, IndiaCo Advisors Pvt. Ltd. is proud to present InEnCy: The Business Plan Competition.

InEnCy is a first of its kind business plan competition in India, launched by IndiaCo in January 2011. It aims at identifying potential relevant innovations that could lead to viable businesses with technological and or scientific breakthroughs to improve or revolutionize Energy Efficiency. With this focus InEnCy has been able to create a support network of industry experts, VCs & investors operating in Energy Efficiency space. The InEnCy team has made a confidant foray into the competitive field of mentoring and Guidance and plans on making InEnCy Business plan competition an annual event to be held in May each year.

Laser focused on the energy efficiency sector, this competition would give a platform to budding entrepreneurs to present their innovative business plans. Mentored by a panel of industry experts, these entrepreneurs will have the further opportunity to shape and fine tune their concepts and hence turn them into successful and thriving businesses.

One winner will be proclaimed, but many more ideas to change the world will get exposure through the competition process. At the Grand Finale on May 14th InEnCy will be showcasing the final 10 business plans/ideas; best three of which will receive exciting awards!

Fast facts:

  • Shortlisted candidates will be assigned mentors from a panel of experts.
  • Online mentoring is available if required
  • Structured and transparent mentoring process.
  • Prizes worth Rs. 5,00,000.
  • A chance to pitch for Investments from IndiaCo Energy Efficiency Fund.
  • Network access to investors, mentors and potential partners.
  • Access to technology incubators.

The last date for registering is 27th Feb, 2011. Check out the InEnCy website and get started.

Pune’s Webonise launches ‘AppBazar’ – Android Marketplace and Apps Contest for India

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Webonise Lab, a Pune-based startup, is creating waves in the mobile apps space. Their mobile development arm Mobinise is set to launch an India specific mobile app store for Android phone users. This Android app store called “AppBazar” will have a strong ‘Indian’ flavour – right from Bollywood Masala apps to cricket and even religious apps. And to get the process of “Indian” Android Apps kickstarted, they’ve announced an Indian Android Developer Contest – where prizes worth Rs. 1.5 lakhs are up for grabs in 10 different categories.

Mobinise sees great opportunity in developing India specific content and intends to give the users a unique mobile experience and in different vernaculars too! AppBazar is expected to hit the market by the first week of April and they plan to target tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities.

The company’s logic behind the India centric focus – it believes that though Indians have a penchant for anything Western, they love to tinge it with – and in fact refuse to give up – their own Desi tastes and flavours. The Tandoori Pizza and Aloo Tikki Burger are just a few examples of products that have been fine-tuned for the Indian market. Hence the rationale to ‘Indianize’ a product that has become an integral part of our daily lives – our mobile devices.

To to jumpstart the process of creating Indianized apps for AppBazar, Mobinise has started the Indian Android Developer Contest(IADC) and is inviting developers to build apps around android for the Indian user. The developer contest is targeted at students, platform enthusiasts, freelancers, and the Android application development community.

We asked Shardul Mohite, CEO of Webonise, about the response to the contest so far and he said:

“The response we’ve got is very positive. We even went to Hyderabad to meet Google and get permission to run the contest. They were supportive and excited as well. The most unexpected response we got was when CNBC TechGuru showed interest in promoting the contest actively, and they’re coming to meet us next week.”

The registration for the contest is already open, and individuals or teams interested can start registering now. From 26th Feb, contestants can start uploading their apps, and the contest will remain open until March 26, 2010. Apps shortlisted for the second round (voting) will be announced on 1st April, and the final prize winners will be announced on 22th April. Prizes are: Rs. 25000 for the grand prize winner, Rs. 15000 for the best Indian app, Rs. 10000 for the best designed app, and a Rs. 10000 prize for the best app in each of 10 categories. The different categories include entertainment (or Masala Apps), Games, Travel, Lifestyle and Health related applications. Apart from this there are also some interesting non-cash rewards.

The only eligibility criteria that they set is for the application to be Indian in nature claiming that the ‘Indian-ness’ of the app is what matters most.

There would be two rounds of judging and parameters like design, usability, innovative idea, popularity (for instance likes on Facebook, votes on the contest site) and of course the votes of jury members will together decide the winners of the contest.

Check out the rules, the full list of categories, and the about page of the contest for more information.

“wh[0x01] WildHack Contest” for articles/video/code related to cyber security by null.co.in

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null-logoNull.co.in, Pune’s network security community for hackers, security professionals, security enthusiasts, and in fact anyone related to IT for whom security matters (ahem: if you are in IT, and security does not matter to you, you should really not be in IT, should you?) is holding a month long contest for the best security related content. Content means anything that you can produce: article, blog post, whitepaper, advisory, disclosure, tutorial, video/audio, source code, tool, proof-of-concept. Pretty much anything that you created on your own, and relates to cyber security, and would be educational for other people to see/read/consume.

The contest runs from 15th June to 15th July, and winners get cool “????” T-shirts (there will be at least 10 winners). It’s OK to submit content that you’ve previously published elsewhere (e.g. bugtraq, or your blog), but it must be your original content. So get cracking (or is it “hacking”) and email your submission to submit _at_ null.co.in

Contest Details

1. The contest starts on 15th June 2009 and ends on 15th July 2009. Winners will be announced on the null mailing list on 20th July 2009.
2. The submissions can be anything related to security/hacking.

3. Submission Categories expected(but not limited to):

  • – L2-L4 security/hacking.
  • – Web 2.0 vulnerabilites and countermeasures.
  • – .NET Malware/security.
  • – Code injection (Binary/XSS/SQL/Command etc).
  • – Spam mitigation and antispam evasion techniques.
  • – Malware detection and antimalware evasion techniques.
  • – Protocol vulnerabilities.
  • – Voip.
  • – Mobile networks GSM/CDMA/3G.
  • – Wireless.
  • – Cryptography.
  • – OS/Kernel and Virtualization security/hacking.
  • – Bluetooth.
  • – Hardware based security/hacking.
  • – Cyber Forensics.
  • – Cyber Warfare.
  • – Social Engineering.

4. Research work in Progress will also be accepted.
5. The submissions can be in the form of:

  • – White papers.
  • – Advisories/Disclosures.
  • – Best Practices.
  • – Video/Audio Demos.
  • – Tutorials.
  • – Hacks, tricks & tweaks.
  • – PoCs.
  • – Source code/Tools.

6. The submission should be original work of the author/submitter.
7. Your submissions* should be emailed to (submit _at_ null.co.in).
8. It is ok to submit your work already published on the net like advisories already posted on FD/Bugtraq, paper presented at a conference etc.
9. Submissions will be judged by core group members of null. Criteria for judgement:

  • – More technical the submission, more chances it has for winning.
  • – Innovation/Some thing new and never heard of before.
  • – Age of the work. Newer work will get more preference.

10. NULL will be giving away atleast 10 T-shirts.
11. For any further queries/details please write to (dhiraj _at_ null.co.in).

*Disclaimer: By submitting your work to null you are giving null the right to publish and redistrubute it in any form.

See the contest website for more details.

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