Do your big fat science and maths books make you break into cold sweat? Imagine an app that lets you download at a nominal cost specific chapters of books explaining all the tough concepts in a simple way.

Amitesh Jha, a Class X student of Loyola School, floored the judges with this idea to win the first prize at the Emerging Entrepreneurs Contest on the XLRI campus on Sunday.

The contest was part of the two-day event organised by XLRI’s incubation centre and entrepreneurship cell XCEED. The Telegraph was the media partner for the event.

Priyanka Sinha, a Class XI student of Kerala Samajam Model School, won the second prize by pitching the idea of an electronic tablet that will not only store all the books in the school syllabus but also function as exercise books.

Around 1,600 students from 10 steel city schools had applied for the contest. A shortlist of 150 students were readied followed by a written round that further pruned the list to 30 students.

Based on an interview, eight students presented their business ideas at the event organised on Sunday evening.

The other ideas that were appreciated revolved around e-waste, menstruation apps and plastic recycling.

East Singhbhum DC Ravi Shankar Shukla, entrepreneur Vishal Kumar and Central Bank of India employee Anshu were the judges.

While Amitesh and Priyanka won a trip to Singapore, the rest bagged the opportunity to visit IIT Kharagpur.

Earlier in the day, the Entrepreneurs Cafe hosted “Exalt: Different routes to building start-ups” where Indiamart founder Brijesh Agarwal and Antilog Vacations founder Abhishek Jaiswal shared their experiences. “Nobody knows which strategy will work for whom. Entrepreneurship is not a formula,” Agarwal said.

Meanwhile, IIM Ranchi won the B-plan contest hosted by Entrepreneurs Café on Saturday. The three-member team won a trip to Singapore and a cash prize of Rs 45,000.