Microsoft’s Imagine Cup : Helping The Software Economy In India Grow

Now in its seventh year, Microsoft’s Imagine Cup is the world’s premier student technology competition, and offers students from all over the world the opportunity to apply their innovation, knowledge, and technical abilities to make the world a better place through technology, and to develop applications that are locally and globally relevant. Will they come up with ideas to enable healthier lives? Better education? Like they say, it’s only limited by your imagination…

Given the various constraints that potential entrepreneurs face in taking their dreams to reality in India, the Innovation Accelerator can help teams move through the phases of starting a business by helping those who have an idea and intention to start an enterprise, and move to the second phase of recognizing a viable business concept. Those select few will finally end up exchanging with the market and contributing to the local software ecosystem in India.

Deepak Jagdish, twice-member of the winning team at the Imagine Cup India Software Design National Final (2006 and 2007) offers his thoughts on the life-changing experience: “The Imagine Cup is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for students who are oriented towards software and information technology.

The competition offers teams a chance to take their innovative ideas from conception all the way through to implementation (obviously, only if they are good enough). I believe that, even though we weren’t able to immediately take our ideas to fruition, we were richer for the experience, and that we have a new perspective on what it takes to get an idea up and running. I remain steadfast in my belief that the entire experience of participating in The Imagine Cup taught me things I would have never learnt otherwise. I still harbor thoughts of starting my own software company based on the solutions that we developed as part of The Imagine Cup. After all, who wouldn’t want to be part of the incredible growth story in our country today, especially that driven by the local software ecosystem? And what more fulfilling way to partake of this phenomenal success than by contributing one’s own innovation and intellect? In my case, I know that it is more a question of when rather than if!”