'Wagon R Think Big Challenge' offers the ideal platform to aspiring business entrepreneurs to exhibit their innovative business plans for funding. The need to motivate and kindle the entrepreneurial spirit among the masses compelled Maruti Suzuki to initiate this unique programme. This event invites Venture Capitalists (VC) to evaluate the ideas proposed by the participants, consider the possibility of funding and judge the commercial potential of the ideas. Launched by the car maker in 2009, it has witnessed two successful seasons since then and has enjoyed loads of huge adulation from the masses. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that this competition has turned out to be one of the top contested challenges in India.
The 3rd season of the heavily anticipated event is all set to begin. Maruti Suzuki made use of its network of 160 Maruti Suzuki dealerships spread across 19 cities for registrations, which commenced on 22nd April 2012 and concludes on 1st June 2012. Apart from going to the designated dealerships, participants also have the option to sign up for this initiative online. Maruti Suzuki has already received as many as 23,000 applications and is all set to break all the previous records for the number of registrations for the event. Its previous two seasons witnessed huge response, with more than 1.25 lac registration for season 1 and 1.35 lac in the following season. Therefore, it can be presumed that the latest season will peg the figures even further.
In the last two seasons, a plethora of unique business plans from multiple cities across India were seen. Aparna Bhatnagar from Jaipur was one of the finalists from West Zone in 2011, who put forward the concept of an online 'The Green and Good Store'. The idea was to sell products which promise to revolutionise the globe by introducing positive social and environmental changes.
The third season of the highly acclaimed event focusses upon raising objectivity even further and concentrating on the participants from particular target groups. There is a new category this year, named 'WagonR Think Big Challenge3 - Young Turks', which has been created specially for B-school students. It aims at promoting entrepreneurial spirit amongst the young generation of the country.
For the general or Mainline category, the company has announced a cash prize of Rs. 10 lacs, a brand new Maruti Suzuki Wagon R and the opportunity to turn the idea into reality through funding by VCs. Registrations for the Young Turks category began towards the end of April and received applications from students of 120 colleges from as many as 12 cities. The winner of this category would be rewarded with a cash prize of Rs. 1 lac.
On this initiative, Shashank Srivastava, Executive Director, Maruti Suzuki India, commented, “Our initiative to nurture innovative business ideas has seen huge popularity in the last two seasons. To encourage entrepreneurship among college students we have specifically added a new category this year. WagonR Think Big Challenge is an ultimate test of a business idea, passion, leadership and smartness.”
