March 23, 2007

Texas Evening MBAs Win $45,000 at McGinnis Venture Competition

Texas Evening MBA students Divakar Jandhyala and Ranjit Nayak won first place at Carnegie Mellon University’s McGinnis Venture Competition, which aims to bring new technologies to market through entrepreneurship. Teams from 26 top international and U.S. business schools participated in the competition March 15-17. The McCombs School team placed in the technology track, winning $25,000 cash and $20,000 in business services as well as an automatic bid in the Moot Corp Competition.

SaaS Significance

Jandhyala (top photo) and Nayak's (bottom photo) winning idea is eVapt, Inc., an early-stage software startup focused on delivering operational efficiency solutions to the rapidly growing Software as a Service (SaaS) market. “The Software as a Service model is gaining significant traction in the application marketplace.”

Proof of the potential behind the eVapt idea comes from a recent McKinsey & Co. survey of senior IT executives, which listed SaaS as one of the most promising new technologies for obtaining real business value. “This acceptance has resulted in a substantial increase in the number of new SaaS vendors,” Jandhyala said. “This emerging market presents a big opportunity for new companies to thrive and we believe eVapt, Inc. is positioned to become one of these successful new companies.”

Entrepreneurial Edge

Both Jandhyala and Nayak have more than15 years of experience in the software industry, which contributed to their competitive edge.

Jandhyala also says the Texas Evening MBA program and the McCombs faculty offered multiple venues and opportunities to expand on their idea and create a real business plan.

“The program allowed us to develop the idea in multiple iterations through the entrepreneurial courses offered,” he said. “Discussion and critique of our ideas with the TEMBA students who generally had broader industry experience allowed us to improve our plan.”

Being able to explain a complex technical idea in more simple terms and convince investors of the value of it was the biggest challenge Jandhyala and Nayak faced at the competition. “For over a year we used the Texas Evening MBA coursework to flush out the details of the business plan,” Jandhyala said. “We also spent a lot of sleepless nights in the last two weeks refining the presentation.”

Representing The University of Texas at Austin in an international competition was one the biggest personal and professional rewards of the competition, Jandhyala said. More importantly, the students now have important contacts and financial backing to make their idea a reality. “Meeting the venture capitalists and getting the initial seed funding for our venture was extremely gratifying,” he said.