Sponsorship: Edit

What are the best ways to get sponsorships for indian college
fests? Edit
How a college committee can pitch for the sponsorship, how they can
reach to big giants who are willing to pay big checks, how they can
identify that company ??
Edit
Comment Share Report Options
Follow Question Promote Question
Twitter Facebook
Share Question
More Related Questions
Related Questions
3,563 views on this question.
Question Stats
Latest activity was 10 Mar
This question has 1 monitor with 195 topic
followers.
18 people are following this question.
Ask to Answer 3 Answers
Emi Jain Edit Bio Make Anonymous
Add your answer
Save Draft Post to Twitter Facebook Add Answer
Suvonil Chatterjee, CEO, Conquest'13
Votes by Anurag Prasad, Shashank Murali, Rajiv J Nagpal, Peru Singh, and 17
more.
From Microsoft: How do I approach companies like Microsoft and Nokia for sponsorship
without any prior relations?
In 2013, I was leading one of India's biggest entrepreneurship events, Conquest
(Conquest- International Startup Conclave ). In the course of raising around $50k
of sponsorship, I talked to a lot of big companies who were potential sponsors. The
process outlined below will hold true for almost all big/small companies that you're
targeting (and it worked really well for us).
Know your event: You have to know your event inside out, its history, its edge
over competitors, its value addition to any sponsor etc. One shaky answer on
the phone can spell death for your partnership.
Showcase your event: A brilliant website and a really good sponsorship
brochure goes a long way in building trust in your event. Spend time + effort on
nailing them.
Identify potential sponsors: You have to know your event inside out to know
who all could potentially benefit from associating with your event. I've seen a lot
of sponsorship committees chasing CSR departments. Even though it works, I
personally never took that route. If your event draws a lot of media attention,
look for companies who might benefit from the same, if your event has a huge
crowd, look for companies who are looking to expand their user base in that age
group. Find companies with similar interests as your event and I'm sure you will
be doing just fine. Conquest being an event about entrepreneurship saw a lot of
support from companies which were/are startups themselves (Ankur Warikoo
from Groupon India, Abdulla Hisham from Foradian Technologies helped us a
lot). We also found brilliant sponsors in Nokia and Amazon (who were
interested in our hackathon) and VC firms (who were interested in the
participants).
Know your sponsor: It's very very important to know a good deal about the
company you are approaching. If you know about their various efforts and find
one such that is complementary to your event, try to focus your efforts on that.
Also the company executive will feel good that it's not just another random cold
e-mail.
Getting that elusive contact: This seems like the toughest point, right? Well,
trust me this is easily solved. A two pronged approach:
1. All hail, LinkedIn: LinkedIn allows you to find out the perfect person to approach
in the company. (Get the Premium services while you are hunting for
sponsorship; it helps.) Try to find someone who is interested in activities related
to your event or an alum. Also, try to approach senior people, higher up on the
What is the best way to meet or get in
contact with high-profile athletes about
brand sponsorship?
Sponsorship: What are the best websites to
look for studies scholarships and
sponsorship?
What are the best ways to get sponsors for
your tech events?
Sponsorship: What are best ways to get
sponsors for sports other than cricket in
India?
Travel: What are the best platforms to get
Sponsorship for my Expedition?
Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in
Computing: What are some ways to get
sponsorship for attending the Grace Hopper
conference?
The College and University Experience: What
are ways to get sponsorship for final year
Mechanical Engineering projects in INDIA?
Sponsorship: What's the best way for an
early-stage web start-up to ask for
sponsorships?
Sponsorship: What's the best way to acquire
sponsorship for my walk from Beijing to
London?
What's the best way to get sponsors for an
amateur play?
Quora only supports English for now. Please write in English only.
22

Add Question Home Emi Search
2
Upvote Comment Share (2) Thank Report 4 Jan
leadership board (as high as you can possibly go; I personally contacted mostly
CXO's or the head of Marketing etc). Once you have shortlisted a few names, try
to add them on LinkedIn. If it's allowed, make sure that one sentence message
is truly brilliant because that can tip the scales in your favour. In case it's not
allowed and you really really want to approach the company, InMail!
2. All hail, mail-id guessing+Rapportive: Sounds incredulous, right? But it's not. You
won't believe me if I told you who all replied to us from mails sent on guessed
email addresses. So go and get yourself this truly amazing extension called
Rapportive (Page on Rapportive ). And start guessing email addresses to
glory. Remember, a company generally maintains the same pattern for all their
contacts and these are quite easy to guess. Let's say my name is Ab Cd and I
work in Xyz.com, chances are my email address would be one of the following:
ab@xyz.com OR ab.cd@xyz.com OR ac@xyz.com etc. So start typing these in
your To: field and keep an eye on Rapportive. In case you get the right email
address, Rap will show you some detailed info and voila you are done!
Interacting with your sponsor: Well you have managed to get that amazing
contact in your favourite company. You have also managed to convince him to
hop onto a phone call with you to discuss things further. This phone call will
most likely make or break your deal. During the call don't appear nervous, be
very well prepared. You should be able to summarise and highlight the best
things about your event under 2 mins. Also, remember to focus exclusively on
how the company would benefit from associating with your event and not how
great your event is. Also try to connect to your contact at a personal level to
make the entire process more enjoyable for both parties. Lastly, never promise
things you can't deliver.
Drafting proposals: As soon as you get off the phone, draft a proposal for the
company highlighting the best possible avenues for the partnership. I have seen
how people tend to get lazy during this phase and lose valuable associations in
the process. One size fits all approach is very very wrong. You will need to draft
customised proposals for each company.
PS: At Conquest we decided to approach sponsorship from a very different angle.
The conventional approach of getting a phone number in the marketing division
and taking it from there seemed very slow and boring, so we decided to make
things interesting and approached CXOs directly. We also did extensive research
before contacting any company. Personally, I had a 80% conversion from the phone
call to an actual deal. Also, being in Pilani, Rajasthan meant that going to visit
offices of potential sponsors would have been a mighty pain. Again, this was very
conventional and hence boring. We wrapped up all our deals over the phone,
emails, Skype and Hangouts.

Upvote 1 Comment Share Thank Report 14 Apr, 2013
Abp Showknight Suggest Bio
Votes by Sudhanshu Agrawal, Yashwant Krishnadas, Stephania Ann Mathew, Gokul
Nath S, and 2 more.
Pitching right company for sponsoring you event is a hectic and cumbersome task
for college committees.. Due to lack of funding or lack of sponsors on board they
are not able to focus on fest.
For solving this problem , we come up with the Idea of ShowKnight | College fest
Sponsors .
Showknight is an online channel to provide a common platform for sponsors and
event hosts. It is started with the efforts of experienced professionals. Showknight
is specialised in making the arrangements for eventhosts and making the
sponsored brands visible in the events like techfests, live concerts, devotional
events, Corporate meets, cultural fests, road shows, marriage ceremonies and lots
more.
In short we go and pitch potential sponsors , on behalf of event hosts.

Hitesh Gossain, Entrepreneur
Vote by Ankit Gupta.
Kudos Showknight, I think thats the way to go. Marketplace model works very well
at places where demand and supply exist - but due to limitations of either (or in this
case - both) - they are unable to engage with each other. We have also initiated a
similar model and have managed to get a lot of sponsors and seekers to engage
with each other. We are way behind our plan to represent at-least 100,000 events in
India - but guess that shouldn't take too long. Onspon : Sponsorship in a click
7

2

Upvote Comment Share Thank Report 20 Feb

Emi Jain Edit Bio Make Anonymous
Add your answer
Save Draft Post to Twitter Facebook Add Answer
Quora only supports English for now. Please write in English only.
Top Stories from Your Feed