Hyderabad Student Startup team ‘FindR’ declared the second best in TYE Global Finals conducted by TiE Seattle, win $1500 Prize Money

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Hyderabad Team ‘FindR’ stood out as a Runner Up at the TiE Young Entrepreneurs Global 2020, the virtual grand finale conducted by TIE Seattle was held on Sunday, the team won prize money of $1500 and generated investors interests.

In this 11^th anniversary edition of the TYE Global jointly organized by TiE Seattle & TiE Global, 32 teams representing TiE chapters from around the world participated virtually on July 17-18th July, 2020. These teams were previously the chapter winners and then mentored to participate in the Global Competition for a cash award of $10000 shared by top 3 teams. After a qualifier round on 17th July, 8 teams were selected for the finals held on 18^th. Teams get 10 minutes to pitch to an eminent Jury panel connected via a video conference. At the Global Final Competition, students compete in teams, create business plans and present their solutions virtually to a panel of judges. TYE 2020 also had a “Maker’s Faire”, “Elevator Pitch”, “Business Model”, Execution”, “Customer Validation” and “Team Work “competition.

Team FindR representing TiE Hyderabad chapter was declared the Winners of the Regional Business Plan Competition held in Jan 2020 for their innovative idea FindR, A LinkedIn-like solution for blue collar jobs including the provision of maids, cleaners, drivers for customers.

The 5 student member team FindR represented by N Hasvanth Reddy from Delhi Public School, G Srilasya from FIITJEE, Samhitha T from The Future Kid’s School, Ishan Amit and Mihir Boppana from Oakridge International School after being declared Global Runners Up now expressed their joy stating ““We dedicated our victory to the TIE Mentors, Parents and TiE Hyderabad team. It was their relentless guidance, and support even during the lockdown time due to the COVID pandemic that led to our triumph. We are eager to further shape this business idea and start our venture. This team was guided throughout the program by advisors Swastik Bihani of Paypal and Murali Bukkapatnam of The Skilling Company.”

Congratulating the winning team Sridhar Pinnapureddy, CMD of CtrlS and President - TiE Hyderabad said "These are benchmarking global scale startup stories from Hyderabad. We are committed to nurturing, shaping, and hand-holding startups like FindR, to grow their idea, giving them much needed guidance and mentoring to compete at a global stage. TiE Hyderabad has a fantastic team of mentors who dedicate their time and effort to grow and strengthen the startup ecosystem. We are proud of these young talented entrepreneurs.

This is a complete team effort put forward by the TYE Program Co-chairs and Board Members Venkatesh Narasimhan, Senior Director Silicon Labs and Viiveck Verma Founder of Upsurge Global, who helped them to grow their idea, giving them thorough guidance and mentoring the students over the last few months to compete at a global stage. He added.

Hosted by TiE Seattle Virtually, TYE student participants were inspired by the keynote address by Mr. Vivek Yeshwant Ranadivé, Chairman of Sacramento Kings, NBA Team and Founder of TIBCO Software a multi-billion-dollar computing major from Silicon Valley.

iDentistry, An AI based image recognition app to self-diagnose dental flaws team from TiE Dallas is the second runner up. BWI (Boxed Water Initiative), A company that provides eco-friendly boxed water as a promotional product from TiE Atlanta Chapter grabbed the first prize at TYE Globals 2020. We congratulate all the winners and participants.

TYE (TiE Young entrepreneurs) is a TiE Global initiative dedicated to chapters integrating classroom sessions, mentoring and business plan competition aimed at High School students (grades 9-12 or equivalent college students are allowed). TYE is designed to teach high school students entrepreneurship and leadership skills. The TYE program is designed for a 16-week period, which includes classroom instruction, design thinking workshops, mentoring support for business plan development, and culminates with business plan competition.

At the core, TYE is developed to encourage the Entrepreneurial Mind-set from an early age and provide insight into Entrepreneurship and instill confidence to lead in a global environment.

About TiE Hyderabad: TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) is a go-to network of 15000+ global entrepreneurs across 63+ cities in 14+ countries, and Hyderabad is a vibrant and most recognized chapter worldwide, each year TiE Hyderabad impacts over 1100 start-ups and 6400+ students, conducts 131+ of events & activities under 20+ themes viz. TiE Grad, TiE Young Entrepreneurs, TYE Summer, Open Mic, Mentor Advisor, Deeptech SIG, Investor Connect, Knowledge Series, Leadership Series & My Story to encourage, nurture next-generation entrepreneurs.

During the last few Months TiETalks a virtual webinar series is sharing relevant information to over 2500+ virtual attendees a month. TiE organization comprises successful entrepreneurs & accomplished professionals, volunteering to support start-ups, with an aim of fostering entrepreneurship across industries, at every stage of the entrepreneurial life cycle. Handholding start-ups & enterprises to the next level of growth through mentoring, education, funding & connecting customers, fostering Women and Student Entrepreneurship initiatives in a big way. 

Hyderabad Student Team Findr, a LinkedIn for Blue-Collar Jobs, Wins 10th Edition of TiE Young Entrepreneurs B-Plan Competition

36 students from 23 schools formed 7 teams and pitched their ideas at the TYE Grand Finale 2019-22 B-Plan, 1 Minute Elevator Pitch and Maker Faire Prototype competition

• 1 Min Elevator Pitch Winner: Comfee, a power conservation solution and PuriFloat, a lake cleansing device declared joint winners in the 1-minute elevator pitch segment


• Maker Faire Prototype winner: RewardBox, a mobile application that unifies the reward points a customer earns across various brands under one roof, adjudged the best Prototype, in the Maker Faire round for their quality prototype


• B- Plan Winner: Findr, a LinkedIn-like solution for blue-collar jobs including the provision of maids, cleaners, drivers for customers won the top honor in the B-Plan competition

TiE Hyderabad announced today the winners of the 10th edition of TYE (TiE Young Entrepreneurs) challenge held for 3 categories, B-Plan, 1 Minute Elevator Pitch and Maker Faire Prototype. The finale was held at the auditorium of Dr. B R Ambedkar Open University in the city on Saturday.

In the TYE challenge, 36 students from 23 schools formed 7 teams and pitched their ideas under the B-Plan, 1 Minute Elevator Pitch and Maker Faire Prototype competition.

The top prize winner in the B-Plan category was Findr, a LinkedIn-like solution for blue-collar jobs including the provision of maids, cleaners, drivers for customers and the runner up team was Flobal, a business idea where flower-flavored ice creams are made of organic ingredients had bagged the runner-up position.

In the Maker Faire category for best prototypes, RewardBox, a mobile application that unifies all the loyalty points a customer earns through his purchases at several stores across the country and alerts the user of their expiry, emerged as the winner.

It was a close contest in 1-minute elevator pitche as 2 teams Comfee and PuriFloat were declared joint winners held using an online voting method.

Comfee is a power conservation solution regulated by an IoT device that controls the speed of fans and air conditioners based through measurement of ambient temperature in the room, while PuriFloat, is an automated device that helps clean lakes using an Electric motor run boat/conveyor were declared joint winners.

The jury members at the TYE Finale were Deepthi Ravula (CEO, Telangana Government-run Women Entrepreneurship Incubator We Hub), Kishore Uppalapati (Director-Operations, Microsoft Services), Rakesh Munnanooru (Founder, CEO, Whistle Drive, a corporate ride-share company) besides Prof. Vijaya Kumari (Director, JNTU run incubator, J Hub) and Vineel Reddy Pindi (CEO, Collab House an innovation hub).

The winners had faced a stiff challenge, as there were a series of interesting pitches, such as Enviros Amigos, a device that could recycle plastic waste into oil through a chemical procedure called pyrolysis, Idenico, an affordably priced paper strip to test for adulteration, contamination or chemical presence in milk.

Congratulating the winners, and their scalable business models President of the TiE Hyderabad Chapter, Sridhar Pinnapureddy, (CEO of CtrlS Datacenters and Cloud4C Services) said, “It took me a couple of failed ventures to actualise my dream of becoming an entrepreneur. The business ideas of these young minds are nothing short of billion-dollar proposals with the potential to emerge as mega enterprises. It is for them to now leverage on the networks such as TiE to reach their pinnacle. These children are the future of our entrepreneur ecosystem and it is heartening these children have the backing of their family to pursue entrepreneurial dreams.”

“We were genuinely surprised by the professionalism of the teams and the relevance of the ideas. They surpassed our expectations and reaffirms our faith in our young generation potential to create a promising future” the jury members had expressed.

Also speaking at the event, program co-chair Mr. Venkatesh Narasimhan, SVP, Redpine Signals Inc said, “It’s really energising when we see bright, young minds gearing up for entrepreneurship at such an impressionable age. The way the youngsters have picked up concepts like revenue models, marketing, value proposition within minutes in the workshops speaks a lot about their interest to grasp the subject.”

Says the co-chair Mr. Viiveck Verma, CSO, Srinivasa Farms, “This program is very important for youngsters to help them change the way they look at the society and how they solve the problems existing in it. It’s significant to note that most ideas presented by the participants in the event had taken stock of immediate issues that affect us as the citizens of the country. It’s delightful to watch a new future being shaped by them.”

The Executive Director of TIE Hyderabad Phani Pattamatta on what next, said “The winner of the TYE Regional Finals would now compete at TYE Global Finals title against 35+ teams coming from 14 countries at Microsoft campus in Seattle, USA in June Month. He also recalled; Hyderabad chapter of TiE holds a record of consecutively winning at this global competition for the past 3 years in a row.”

About TYE Program: TiE Hyderabad runs two seasons of TYE program, one in Summer it starts in April and ends in June every month. The current season started in October 2019 and close to 40 students underwent a rigorous curriculum on entrepreneurship and learned business concepts through several classroom sessions over the weekend workshops and few weeks of mentoring by successful entrepreneurs, the Charter Members of TiE Hyderabad. This is the one program of global class that is completely run by practicing entrepreneurs to nurture aspiring young students.

Grand Finale B-plan competition Winners Details:

Winners - Findr was declared the Winner of the B-Plan round in the grand finale of the 10th edition of TYE 2019-20. Team Findr members were :

• N Hasvanth Reddy- Delhi Public School


• G Srilasya - FIITJEE


• Mihir Chowdary - Chaitanya Vidyalaya


• Samhitha T - Future Kids


• Ishan Amit - Oakridge

Runners up - Flobal declared the runners-up of the B-Plan round in the grand finale of the 10th edition of TYE 2019-20.

[caption id="attachment_141468" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Dr. Balaji Bhyravbhatla(Mentor, Flobal, MD, HyLasCo BioTechnology), N Venkatesh(TYE Program Co-Chair), Shrilekha J(Bharatiya Vidyalaya), Hitha Nalla(Future Kids), Sridhar Reddy(President, TiE Hyderabad; CMD - CtrlS), Aditya Manoj( Gitanjali), Amogh P(Chirec Public School), Viiveck Verma(TYE Program Co-Chair), Swapan G(Chirec Public School)) Phani Pattamatta(ED, TiE Hyderabad)[/caption]

Team Flobal members were

1. Hitha N - Future Kids


2. Swapan – Chirec


3. Shrilekha J - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Public School


4. Hesham Babukhan -International School


5. Aditya M Krishna – Gitanjali


6. Amogh - Chirec

Comfee & Purifloat

[caption id="attachment_141469" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] (Left to Right): N Venkatesh(TYE Program Co-Chair), Aditi P(Future Kids), Sridhar Reddy(President, TiE Hyderabad; CMD - CtrlS), Arav J G(Bharatiya Vidyalaya) Viiveck Verma(TYE Program Co-Chair), Phani Pattamatta(ED, TiE Hyderabad)[/caption]

Reward Box

[caption id="attachment_141470" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] (Left to Right): N Venkatesh(TYE Program Co-Chair), Priyal S, Shreyas Bathi(Sancta Maria), K Hitesh Kumar(Future Kids), Sridhar Reddy(President, TiE Hyderabad; CMD - CtrlS), Rewanth Talasila( FIITJEE), Rohan N(Chirec Public School), Viiveck Verma(TYE Program Co-Chair)[/caption]