19 excited and aspiring entrepreneurs, 5 high impact projects, 5 supercharged mentors, 1 weekend, 48 hours, at one of the prestigious education institutes in India – that’s what the first edition of Sparkpluggers Nashik was all about this past weekend at Symbiosis Institute of Operations Management. Sparkpluggers arrived in Nashik for the 1^st time on April 5^th-6^thand the energy, passion, excitement and drive displayed by the participants showed that the city was up for the challenge.

This edition at Symbiosis Nashik saw us hosting participants covering students, professionals, professors, aspiring entrepreneurs and people who have already taken the leap into entrepreneurship. The event started on April 5^th Saturdaywith a quick speed networking session. The participants gathered up and were allowed to interact and get to know each other as much as possible. After a brief introduction and opening gyan session on how entrepreneurs need to be fools to be successful from the event organizers, the house was left open to elevator pitches from entrepreneurs about their business ideas.

A total of 15 ideas were pitched and that showed the kind of diverse and innovative thought processes the aspiring generation of entrepreneurs is coming up with. From these pitches, 5 entrepreneurs were finally able to assemble a team to develop their ideas over the weekend.

With intense mentoring sessions from mentors with vast experiences in the field of entrepreneurship, real estate, pharmaceutical, training & education, technology etc. the teams kept on working and refining their business models, identifying revenue streams, ways of gaining market share and becoming sustainable businesses.

The final pitches were made by these entrepreneurs on Sunday and received valuable feedback from our mentors and investor.

With an impactful Sparkpluggers coming to an end, the sparkpluggers team is now looking at rolling to other cities of India and the world in the coming months. Wishing all the best to the aspiring entrepreneurs whom we met at Nashik, we look forward to meeting many more in the days ahead. We left Symbiosis Nashik with the hope of being back very soon – to recreate the magic of Sparkpluggers, in a bigger and better format.