PayPal extends \'Start Tank\' incubation challenge to student entrepreneurs

In an effort to promote a culture of entrepreneurship among the student community, PayPal has opened the doors of its Start Tank incubator for students aspiring to start their own enterprise. The incubation centre in Chennai, which hosts and grooms tech start-up companies, now encourages student entrepreneurs from across top universities to pitch their tech ideas and turn them into reality.

PayPal’s Start Tank rolled out its Incubation Challenge at the recently held Entrepreneurship Conclave and start-up Hive at IIT-Madras and selected two teams from the competition.

“They will now have a direct entry into the finals of the Incubation Challenge to be conducted later this year, and upon selection, get incubated at Start Tank,” stated the release.

The winning idea of ‘delivering logistics via drones’ was pitched by a team of MTech students from IIT-M and the runner-up idea ‘pushing dynamic ads into mobile games in place of the obtrusive banner ads’ came from a team of dual degree students, also from IIT-M. Several promising concepts such as crowd funding to support the underprivileged, 3D printing & distribution, ‘green garbage’ waste management, among many others, were also presented by students from several leading universities in the country.

Anupam Pahuja, GM (Technology – Asia-Pacific), PayPal, said, “Extending the Start Tank Incubation Challenge to student entrepreneurs comes with the commitment of supporting their innovative start-up ideas and tech concepts. It is encouraging to see many students in India daring to dream to give wings to their ideas and set up business ventures. Through Start Tank, we aim to help them with the right kind of mentorship and guidance to enter the market right after graduation.”

PayPal launched ‘Start Tank Incubation Challenge’ last year to identify and incubate the country’s next generation tech-centric start-ups. After IIT-Madras, PayPal has now partnered with SASTRA University, to organize the incubation challenge as part of their techno-management fest to be held in Thanjavur in February 2015.

PayPal’s Start Tank provides an obligation-free environment for select start-ups to evolve. The company stated that its exclusive facility in PayPal’s Chennai development centre has an office area of more than 11,000 square feet with a world-class incubation space, state-of-the-art conference rooms and other amenities.

Start Tank runs globally across PayPal offices in Boston, London and Chennai, and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists. PayPal formally launched its Chennai start-up incubator in association with TiEChennai in November 2013 and currently hosts six start-ups: DoPartTime, Fantain, Hey Feedback, Kobster.com, Konotor, and PiQube.