I am only handling the business and entrepreneurial side of this venture. I am not the one engineering or manufacturing the rover, so any mention of the rover in this post describes the product plan, not something I built myself.
For the evaluation rounds I prepared three spoken answers, each roughly a minute long. Every answer opened by addressing the judges directly, stayed on a single idea, used plain sentence structure, and closed by thanking the judges. The three criteria were:
Field visit and customer insight – I described the Vedaranyam trip, what the workers and producers told us, and how those observations shaped the payload target and the weather‑alert feature. One sentence captured the link: “We saw workers carry 30 kg loads thirty times a day, and producers lose a whole pan when rain hits, so the rover must carry 100 kg and warn before the rain arrives.” I kept the story chronological: arrival, conversation, observation, conclusion. I also mentioned the specific quote from a worker about back pain to make the insight concrete.
Market opportunity (TAM, SAM, SOM) – I stated the three layers without numbers. “All Indian salt pans that still move salt by hand form the total market. The Tamil Nadu coastal districts we can reach are our serviceable market. The Vedaranyam producers who have already agreed to a pilot are the market we can obtain today.” One clear sentence per layer, no jargon. I added a single line on why the SAM is limited to Tamil Nadu: language, travel time, and existing contractor relationships. I finished by noting that the SOM is a handful of farms we have already visited.
Go‑to‑market and customer validation – I laid out the two‑track model and the pilot‑first approach. “We will demo in Vedaranyam, convert interest into rental or purchase commitments, and measure pilot feedback, trial users, enquiries and signed agreements before expanding to the next district.” End with thanks. I also mentioned the four metrics we will track so judges know exactly what success looks like: pilot feedback score, number of trial users, rental enquiries, and firm commitments.
The pattern works for any student founder: map each judging criterion to a one‑minute story, keep the language plain, and always close with a thank‑you. It forces you to know the answer cold and gives the judges a clean, memorable takeaway. Practising each speech aloud three times the night before the round made the delivery smooth and removed filler words.