BENGALURU: A panel of highly dedicated and the most brilliant minds in the country were brought together to recognize the winners for ET Startup Awards 2016. The ten member jury assembled by Economic Times comprised of notable entrepreneurs, investors, industry leaders, and technology evangelists from different sectors. Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, presided the jury, pledging himself along with the other members to find the most deserving candidate. Each category for the awards consisted of five nominees, and each category was further narrowed down to two candidates solely based on the number of votes each received. The fate of the final two in each category swindled on a thorough discussion lead by the jury that focused on the merits of the startups. The members of the jury went through the Black Book profiles of the shortlisted candidates prepared by ET. Though everyone was already clear about whom to vote for among the candidates, but when the event commenced, it was an absolutely different scenario. "Everybody had thoughtful points that were not always aligned. There was a lot of debate and a lot of learning because of that," says Kola, the winner of the Midas Touch Award for Best Investor in 2015. 

All these startups present at the event were trying to address a wide range of issues. This observation established the fact that the level of entrepreneurship in the country is swiftly growing, and India harbors the potential to build large companies across several sectors.  Finding startups which could inspire other Indian companies with similar aspirations was one of the chief aspect the jury was searching for in the winner. "We are here to pick role models," said Sachin Bansal, Cofounder, Flipkart. 

Satyan Gajwani, Vice-Chairman, Times Internet, expresses "It is very interesting to see the kind of innovations coming out from these college campuses. It wasn't the usual 'Let's build an ecommerce company'. It's disruptive and different." The Best on Campus category witnessed four out of five startups from the Chennai IIT campus. This category recognized startups that spun right from the colleges across the country, and Ather Energy from IIT-Madras campus emerged as the winner in this category.

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