The Chandigarh Administration today shortlisted 13 entrepreneurs, out of the total 30 entries for the final round of EnterPrize, the Chandigarh IT — TiE Business Plan Competition.

A group mentoring session will be held on August 18 for those who have qualified for the finals.

Director (Information Technology) Manjit Brar chaired the evaluation committee, which comprises Vivek Atray, former IT Director; Ajay Shrivastava, Joint Director and Centre Head, Software Technology Parks of India (STPI); Pratap Aggarwal, IDS Infotech; Sameer Goel from Infosys, Puneet Vatsayan from Mobera Systems and Padmaja Ruparel, president of the Indian Angel Network.

“It is obvious that Chandigarh has arrived on the international IT destination scene. We have received entries from entrepreneurs based overseas as well as across India. All shortlisted people have expressed their willingness to set up businesses at Chandigarh. This is indeed gratifying as the objective of the Chandigarh Administration to identify deserving candidates for the Entrepreneurship Development Centre has been met by the competition”, said Manjit Brar.

The 13 entrepreneurs who have entered the finals of the Business Plan Competition are: Avi Sidhu, a recipient of five international animation awards, Deepak Syal, who has a PEC/SGSITS Indore background; Mumbai-based Ritesh Ahuja, who has a IIT/IIM/Stanford background; Pulkit Jain, an IIT Mumbai graduate and co-founder of Lakshya; Nishant Chandra, IIT Mumbai/ ISB Hyderabad graduate; Sahil Sakhuja, MBA Finance from NMIMS, Mumbai; Ankur Tripathi, a graduate of IIT Mumbai; Amit Arora, an IIT Kanpur graduate with 9 years experience in software development in California, USA-based Manu Bhardwaj, CEO of Biz Dev, USA; Shivam Goswami, who has designed several software products for the webmaster industry; Mumbai-based Shirish Chitte, an IIM-A graduate; Naresh Bharadwaj a graduate of IIT Mumbai, IIM Bangalore and BITS Pilani and Munish Jindal, an IIT Delhi graduate.