SAE BITS Pilani
Why
A student racing team builds real vehicles that cost real money, and the bring-up before a competition is where they break. Someone has to find the sponsors, and someone has to find the faults.
How
I ran sponsorship: cold outreach, a commercial case for each partner that matched what they wanted to what the build would deliver, and the negotiation to close it. On the engineering side I led subsystem design and hardware integration across two builds, and traced the electrical faults that appeared in the weeks before competition back to failing sensors and power supplies. I also ran the team accounts, and most sponsor conversations started from a post, so the posting and the fundraising were one job.
What came out
The builds were funded, and the cars reached competition with the faults found in the workshop instead of on the track.
What broke
Most cold outreach went nowhere. The pitches that worked were the ones written around what the partner needed, not around what the team needed, and it took a few dead conversations to learn that.