From Late-Night Meetings to Crore-Worth Prizes: Meet the IIT Bombay Students Powering Startups Since 30 Yrs

The last meeting ends at 3:25 am. One student leans back and exhales; another scrolls through the spreadsheet one last time. A voice from the doorway says, “Chai?”

Five minutes later, half the team is walking under the yellow streetlights towards the stall near the hostel gate. Eyes are heavy, jokes still land, and the steam from paper cups fogs up to-do lists.

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“It’s strange,” says Amit Bhartiya, events and PR head at IIT Bombay’s Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell). “We’re really tired by then, but somehow those few minutes feel like the best part of the day.”

These students are the faces behind ‘Eureka!’ — a student-run business-model competition that has helped thousands of young innovators turn ideas into ventures. For nearly three decades, it has been IIT Bombay’s flagship platform for early-stage startups — a space where first-time founders test ideas, meet mentors, and take their first shaky, hopeful steps into the startup world.

Where it all began

It began in 1998 with a few students who wondered why career dreams had to end at campus placements. What if, they thought, students could build something of their own? 

They drafted a rough plan for a business-model competition — mentors would guide, judges would listen, and a few cheques would help teams get started. It was a simple idea, born out of curiosity more than ambition, yet it set off a chain reaction that never really stopped. Each batch added new layers — stronger partnerships, better outreach, and wider ambition.

Today, entries arrive from every corner of India, sometimes even from school students trying out their first ideas.

“This year, we’ve got prizes worth Rs 2 crore and access to hundreds of mentors and investors,” Amit says. “But what matters most is that it’s free. You don’t pay to take part. Even if you don’t win, you walk away with feedback or contacts that might change your path.”

Finding the spark

Amit, a third-year economics student from Kota, first wandered into E-Cell in his first year because something about the place made him want to show up. “I wanted to see how big ideas come to life,” he says. “I never felt tired in that small room we still call our office, that was my sign.”

For many, that small office becomes a second home. Late-night brainstorms blur into friendships; plans scribbled in notebooks begin to look like event stages.

Niharika Bansal, now E-Cell’s media head, found her spark at a single event. “I volunteered for The Ten Minute Million,” she says.

“As part of this competition, founders pitch live to investors in 10 minutes, with thousands watching. It was my first backstage view of what funding looks like. The nerves, the cues, the pressure. I learnt more in two days than I had in months.”

Curiosity turned into commitment. Amit and Niharika kept showing up, first as volunteers, then as managers, and eventually as part of the team that threads the year together.

10 months, one vision

Preparation starts almost as soon as a new team takes over in March. What follows are 10 to 12 months of meetings, emails, and endless calls that spill into the early hours. “We’ve had meetings that run for five hours straight,” Niharika says, laughing. “Sometimes the Wi-Fi gives up before we do.”

The pace rarely slows. Between classes, exams, and calls, the team learns to switch roles faster than tabs on a laptop.

“Sometimes the phone rings in the middle of a lecture,” Amit says, smiling. “You can’t miss it, so you ask for a washroom break and take the call outside. If you skip it, that person might not call again for two days.”

The work spills into nights that stretch too long and mornings that start too soon. There are technical glitches, class schedules that clash with deadlines, budgets that stretch thin, and vendors who reply only at odd hours. “We sit together and fix things,” Amit says. 

From idea to enterprise

This year’s agenda, ‘From Idea to Enterprise’, captures what Eureka! has always stood for — turning a spark into something real. Over five months, participants move through mentoring, workshops, and the nerve-wracking closed-room pitches that decide who reaches the final round.

Even those who don’t win walk away with something to build on.

There’s the Networking Arena, for instance — a hall alive with conversation, where angels, mentors, and founders move table to table, swapping notes and possibilities. “People ask about market entry, building an MVP, and how to hire early,” Niharika says. “One founder from Assam messaged me later. He said the long journey to Mumbai was worth it because he found interns at IIT Bombay and made contacts he could not have imagined.”

Amit recalls one agri-tech team whose prototype cracked minutes before their pitch. “We grabbed whatever we could find, fixed it with stationery, and tweaked their slides right there,” he says, laughing. “Two months later, they called. They’d raised Rs 14 lakh. That call stays with me.”

For the students running Eureka!, these moments are reminders of why the all-nighters and packed schedules matter — because somewhere, someone’s first idea is getting its start.

Can one event change a life?

Ask Shriyans Bhandari, and he’ll tell you it absolutely can.

In 2015, Shriyans and his friend Ramesh Dhami entered Eureka! with a half-formed idea — to recycle old, discarded shoes into something new and affordable. Back then, it wasn’t even called GreenSole. “We called it Kadam by Kadam,” Shriyans laughs. “There was no logo, no brand, just two of us trying to figure out if this could even work.”

They didn’t come from the startup world; they came with curiosity. Eureka! gave them what they didn’t have — mentors who listened, a structure to refine their plan, and a small push in the form of Rs 3 lakh in milestone-linked funding.

“It wasn’t just the money,” he says. “Those sessions on pitching and planning gave us direction. We learnt how to think like entrepreneurs — how to make our idea survive outside the classroom.”

What began as a student project grew into ‘GreenSole’, a sustainable footwear brand and foundation that now refurbishes thousands of pairs of shoes every year for children in need. “A few years later, we came back to Eureka! — but this time as partners,” Shriyans smiles. “That moment hit different. From participants to sponsors — that’s the power of this platform.”

Maybe that’s why mentors like Aman Lamba call Eureka! “a live laboratory of ideas.”

Aman has been mentoring teams here for years, and he says the energy still surprises him. “Students take feedback, stay up all night, and come back the next morning with something completely different,” he says. “You can almost see them grow in real time.”

The first chapter of a long story

To understand how Eureka! became what it is, it helps to look back. Nishant Chandra, who helped run Eureka! in 2002–03, remembers the chaos fondly. “We got about 400 entries that year,” he says. “We built the website ourselves and added new judges just days before the event because the shortlist was too big.”

They ran E-Cell like a startup — clear roles, fast decisions, and a rule that every batch should leave the next one stronger. Over time, that discipline became tradition. With the SINE incubator, the MBA school, and alumni support joining hands, Eureka! turned from a single event into a full ecosystem — where workshops lead to mentoring, mentoring to pilots, and pitches to actual ventures.

Showtime at IIT Bombay

By the time the final day arrives, the air in the auditorium hums with nerves and caffeine. Volunteers run cables, someone tests the mic, and founders rehearse their opening lines under their breath.

“When we put on our Eureka! hoodies and saw the hall packed, it hit us,” Amit says. “We’d actually built something that mattered.”

For Niharika, the realisation comes later, when the crowd has gone and the noise fades. “When the last chair is stacked and it’s just the team left, you think about everyone who showed up — the mentors who stayed late, the people who travelled so far. That’s when it feels real.”

Moments like these remind them why Eureka! exists at all. Because somewhere beyond this hall, in classrooms, hostels, and rented rooms, India’s next founders are already building — juggling semesters and prototypes, ideas and deadlines. For them, Eureka! isn’t just a competition; it’s a rehearsal for the real world — a place to fail safely, learn fast, and start again.

“E-Cell is like a startup that never shuts down,” Niharika says. “The founders just keep changing.”

The lights will fade, the applause will settle, and the team will go back to being students again — tired, broke, and brimming with ideas. But somewhere in that crowd, another dream will have just taken root.

That’s the thing about Eureka! — it doesn’t end when the event does. It begins there.

All images courtesy IIT Bombay’s E-Cell team