Heard of a Wireless Solar Phone Charger, Robotic Lawnmower or Photo Tagging Software? These breakthrough business ideas sparked at TyE Gala ceremony early this April by the TyE students of 2010-11.

Another year of the TyE program, run by TiE-Boston had its grand finale with the students participating in the 10K Business Plan Competition held on Saturday, April 9, 2011 at the Holiday Inn Select in Woburn, MA. Seven outstanding teams, Omni College Group, Photo Tagging, Illumination, Lex-Imagen, Auto Guard, Knowtz, and Team Alpha, presented their business plans to a panel of distinguished judges comprising of leading VCs and entrepreneurs. The business ideas spanned diverse sectors like solar phone chargers, robotic lawnmower and technologies for easy photo tagging, enhancing education and preventing road accidents.

Illumination, a smart phone solar wireless charger company won the first prize of 5K at the TYE 2010-2011 Business Plan Competition. This all girls team of high school student’s included Nivedha Ram, CEO; Anjithaa Radakrishnan, CFO; Namrita Murali, CTO and Roshni Patel, COO.  The runners up were Media Orb, a photo tagging software company and Lex-Imagen, a portable tablet company for enhancing student education. They tied for the second and third position, each receiving 2.5K as their prize money.

The highlight of the evening was Keynote Speaker, Sanjiv Chopra, M.D., MACP, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School who shared his insights on leadership and provided young people with much food for thought on becoming great leaders and  helping create the country's future economy.  He truly inspired the students with examples of visionary leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Narayana Murthy, Winston Churchill, Papa Jaime, Dalai Rama, Paul Farmer and many more. His ideas on leadership is quoted "Great leaders listen with heart and soul, dare to dream big, have an upbeat and courageous attitude, adhere to their principles and possess a sense of purpose. Each one of us have the spark of leadership. Keep it Ignited!"

This was followed by an motivating talk by Guest Speaker Nisreen Bagasra, Member of U.S. Olympic Shooting Team and a 4th ranker at the 2010 U.S. Nationals in Women's Air Pistol. The audience listened to her will keen interest as she derived a commonality between competitive shooting and entrepreneurship. She said, "Both entrepreneurship and competitive shooting needs a passion for excellence by setting goals high. One must put in a lot of hard work, have a strong focus and confidence to achieve their goals."

The TyE program was adopted by TiE-Global in 2009 and is now offered to other TiE chapters. This year 9 TiE chapters are running a TyE Program. The 2nd TyE 25K Global Business Plan Competition is being held on April 30, 2011 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Team Illumination from TyE-Boston and winning teams from 8 other chapters will participate and present their business plans.

TyE or TiE Young Entrepreneurs is TiE-Boston’s signature program for high school students with a mission to excite young people to discover the rewards and challenges of becoming entrepreneurs and business leaders. This program introduces entrepreneurship and business to students improving their self confidence and developing leadership skills and capabilities.

Since the inception of TyE in 2005, over 180 students have participated in the program from over 25 local schools in New England. This year, over 30 high school students spent Saturday mornings learning what it means to be an entrepreneur.  

We thank our sponsors and the organizing committee members for their hard work and support in making this event a grand success. TyE aims to become world's leading entrepreneurial program for the youth that will continue to provide an environment for young people to fulfill their dream of becoming entrepreneurs and business leaders.

Listed below are the seven business plan ideas, team members and mentors: 

Illumination - Smart Phone Solar Wireless Charger
Illumination Corporation is a company that will provide customers with smart phone power anytime and anywhere. Its product, Portanova is a smart phone case that converts solar energy into electricity and uses this electricity to wirelessly charge one's smart phone. 
Team: Anjithaa Radhakrishnan, Namrita Murali, Nivedha Ram, Roshni Patel
Mentor: Gopal Subramanian

Media Orb - Photo Tagging Software
MediaORB offers a cloud based interactive software for easy browsing, effective organization and tagging of photos. It is a privately owned technology company, developing solutions to organize media with precision accuracy based on automatic face recognition, a GPS locator, color schemes, and date organization.       
Team: Avvinash Radhakrishnan, Samip Desai, Vignesh Mohankumar
Mentor: Murali Menon

Lex-Imagen - Portable Tablet to Enhance Learning Experience
Lex-Imagen is a company that is dedicated to creating revolutionary products that enhance a student’s learning experience. The Edge is a light, portable tablet aimed at providing an unparalleled educational experience to every high school and their students.
Team: Kunal Shah, Rohan Rastogi, Sarita Ballakur, Suraj Shroff
Mentor: Saurin Shroff, Neeta Agarwal

Knowtz - Providing Summarized Notes for Quicker Learning
Knowtz is a company dedicated to helping students study more effectively and achieve a deep understanding of the study material. Our product generates precise summaries of books (and other material), enabling students to quickly and accurately understand the key points of a body of text.
Team: Anish Athalye, Bryant Gill, Dhroova Aiylam, Jai Vekeria, Zohar Ghadyali
Mentor: Murtaza Ghadyali, Giselle Gill

Omni College Group - Providing Efficient College Application Process
Omni College Group offers a website called Halls of Ivy providing students to work through the college application process more efficiently. It will help the average high school senior manage each different step of the application process, starting with compiling a list of schools and finishing with sending all the correct paperwork to the college they will attend.
Team: Aditya Puttigampala, Benjamin Grossman, Poornima Aggarwal, Sunny     Reddy, William Case    
Mentor: Casey Gibbons

Team Alpha - Robotic Lawnmower
The Robotic lawnmower mows your lawn without any manpower required. This new lawnmower will automatically mow your lawn while you can relax inside your house.
Team: Goutham Sudhir, Nishant Kadimdiwan, Sadhana Subramanian
Mentor: Ajay Bharadwaj

Auto Guard
AutoGuard is a product that focuses on pre-emptive stoppage of accidents. Its key features counteract the major causes of accidents and prevents drivers from receiving text messages, drunk driving and warns the driver on speed limits.
Team: Avik Roychowdhury, Gayatri Menon, Prashant Veeragandham, Sanjay Bathchu, Vishruth Reddy      
Mentor: Soren Harrison

|