to the campus which is completely made of reused metal. Themed decoration of the campus during college festivals often comes under the prerogative of this club. Toasmaster India recently started its NITK Chapter. Athletics Sports facilities include the cricket ground, tennis lawns, badminton and table tennis complex, the basketball and volleyball courts along with a swimming pool. The Recreation Committee (RC) of the institute organizes recreational activities including freshers cup, floodlit cricket matches. The much-awaited inter-year sports festival 'Phoenix' is organized during the even semester where students battle for gold, silver and bronze medals, and the overall shield. NITK sports teams participate in events all over the country as part of the Inter-NIT sports meet. During the cultural festival 'Incident', NITK hosts 'Slam Dunk', an intercollegiate basketball tournament. Entrepreneurship culture and NITK STEP The institute has its own technology startup incubator named STEP (Science & Technology Entrepreneurs Park) which provides office space and in some cases seed funds to startups incubated there. NITK–STEP (formerly KREC-STEP) was first established on 31 August 1994. Some notable startups founded by recently graduated alumni of NITK Surathkal are Practo, Delhivery, Nestaway, DriveU, Taxi For Sure, Chai Point, Simplilearn, BHIVE, Travelyaari, Pinkvilla. Practo is one of the startups conceived within NITK Campus and is now valued at half a billion dollars. Many NITK alumni are actively involved as Partners in Venture Capital firms like Clear Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Peepul Capital, Benhamou Global Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Unitus Seed Fund. Notable alumni NITK Surathkal has an alumni association called NITK Alumni Association (NITKAA). Notable NITK alumni include: K. V. Kamath, 1969, President of BRICS Bank, Former Chairman of ICICI Bank, former Chairman of Infosys K. Ullas Karanth, 1971, Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society India Program Ashok Kheny, 1972, Director of Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises; MLA from Bidar (South) in Karnataka Legislative Assembly Thomas Zacharia, 1980, Deputy Director of ORNL Computer Science and Mathematics Division Pramod Madhwaraj, 1990, Former Minister, Government of Karnataka Audimulapu Suresh, 1984, Minister of Education in Government of Andhra Pradesh and Member of YSR Congress Party Rajeev Madhavan, 1987, Founder of Magma DA, venture capitalist in USA, on the Dean's Advisory Board at UCLA's Henry Samueli School of Engineering Sunil Kumar, 1990, Provost, Johns Hopkins University Pramod Viswanath, 1993, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign Sridhar Rangayan, filmmaker with a focus on queer subjects Neeraj