CS Student Project Receives Entrepreneurship Prototyping Grant

04-10-2013

Sudeep Gottipatti and Austin Loudin, a freshman and a sophomore in Computer Science respectively, were among those selected to have a project funded by a new grant program for student entrepreneurs at Purdue.

The student mini grant program makes awards up to $3,600 to accelerate entrepreneurship at Purdue by helping students with entrepreneurial ideas construct a first prototype. A total of 24 proposals were submitted to this inaugural competition and 11 students on nine teams won grants. The awardees are expected to pursue additional opportunities to advance their projects, such as business plan competitions and other grants.

Gottipatti and Loudin won a $3,038 grant for their project Basket, a mobile app and Web-based platform for same-day delivery of thousands of items, from groceries to laundry detergent.

The mini grant program is sponsored by Purdue's College of Technology and the Purdue Innovation and Commercialization Center-IT (ICC-IT) using funds from the endowed professorship held by Melissa Dark, W.C. Furnas Professor of Technology, who serves as the ICC-IT's faculty director.

There will be another round of student mini grants in fall 2013. For more information, contact Professor Dark at dark@purdue.edu.

Dark says the prototypes funded by the grants are an important step in the innovation process. "It is really where students take ideas and start to create early versions of real things. You can't get better versions until you have early versions."

Congratulations to Sudeep Gottipatti and Austin Loudin on their grant!