Conquest, BITS Pilani, is inviting applications from early-stage startups to apply for this programme that aims to provide candidates high growth programme with mentorship, funding opportunities, media coverage and resource credits to help build and iterate over their products. Interested candidates can apply on the official Conquest website — conquest.org.in.

This programme usually sees participation from various sectors such as SaaS, HealthTech, AgriTech, FinTech, EdTech, e-commerce among others, but is open to all.

The registration is completely free of cost.

Timeline

Interested candidates have time till May 30 to apply for the programme. After the application form is filled, the top 100 startups out of these will receive extensive resource credits from the resource partners spread over a broad range of services useful for early stage companies. After that, the mentoring sessions for top 30 shortlisted startups will begin in the last week of June and extend into the first week of July.

After concluding the mentoring sessions, the experts will begin with one on one mentoring for the top 15 startups that are chosen till the first week of August. Then, the top 10 startups out of these will then have a week long offline programme in Bengaluru in the third week of August culminating in a Demo Day where they get to pitch to some of the top founders, VCs and angels in the country.

In this process, the first round of shortlisting will be carried out through the shortlisting partners who use AI-based tools to evaluate the proposed businesses and ideas. After that, in all rounds, mentors will provide constructive feedback on a range of metrics both general and specific to the sector to evaluate and shortlist startups in further rounds.

The winner, however, will be decided by the jury consisting VC of known companies, angel investors and more on the Demo Day.

Registration

To enter the contest, candidates have to first fill an application form which would require basic details such as the Founder’s name, Startup’s name and contact details. After that, interested candidates will have to fill out the full startup application, which would demand more in-depth information about the startup including a link to the concerned website or any online resource that can help the jury understand the company better.

The candidates will also have to detail their road map, market size, current revenue, funding status, and the other required details. The experts also advice on suggesting a pitch deck, which is optional, but helpful.