Convocation of Class of 2011, Indus World School of Business – Creating Entrepreneurial leaders

Sanjeev Bikchandani, Founder Naukri.com delivering convocation address

As the sun was setting and the sky was opening up with a light drizzle, IWSB’s campus wore a festive look, for the Class of 2011 walked in a ceremonial procession to take the last bow at their alma mater to be awarded with their graduation degrees. Sanjeev Bikchandani, founder of Naukri.com, one of the celebrated first generation entrepreneurs of India in recent times was the guest of honour to award the degrees and excellence awards to the budding entrepreneurial leaders.

Sanjeev, was indeed the right person to be there for the apt occasion of the second convocation, as IWSB is setting new standards for being only one of a kind institution in the country in facilitating youth to become entrepreneurial leaders.

The welcome address by the Director, Prof Arindam Lahiri, outlined the achievements of this year. In short span of time, the students in IWSB have received national and international recognitions including Rural Management Association of India’s (RMAI) best rural business model national award, Cherie Blair Foundation NEN fellowship for young women entrepreneur. The institution has been honored by NEN (National Entrepreneurial Network) for the third consecutive year as one of the most entrepreneurial campuses of the country. The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) co-opted IWSB to launch its much-acclaimed international programme, TYE – The young entrepreneurs programme for school going students. In the first batch, about 50 students (of classes 8-12) selected from various schools of Delhi underwent this programme at IIT Delhi, with IWSB anchoring the whole programme.

Exhorting the youngsters, both the graduating batch and the PG12 batch, Sanjeev spoke to them about the humble beginnings of his journey as an entrepreneur from a middle class family. He said that three things are very important to excel in life.

• First – look for meaning in whatever you choose to do, and not go after money. He shared his struggles for the first seven years of not being able to take salary regularly from his firm. Success lies in there.

• Second – persistence and perseverance are the key to success. Look for a pot of gold in twenty years and not in twenty months. Have a plan for what you would like to achieve in five, ten and fifteen years and be focused at any cost. One in hundred do it and they make everything happen.

• Third – Dream Big, Start small – your dream needs to be audacious but it gets built in small ounces every day. Secret lies in what you do to succeed in these smaller steps towards achieving the big dream. Nothing is small if you really pursue purposefully.

Earlier, Satya, Chairman of Board of governors (BoG), IWSB and founder chairman of Career Launcher group, in his address shared his journey and said that being humble while chasing your dreams is the key to success.

Gautam Puri, Vice-chair, BoG, concluded the formal session with his address on vote of thanks.

The whole of the evening was taken care of by the PG12 students with active support of the faculty. Kudos to the organizing team.

IWSB Excellence Awards Winner for the year – Ankita Gupta

Ankita Gupta, winner of the medals for excellence, with Sanjeev

Ankita Gupta, who has won national and international laurels that include the RMAI and Cherie Blair Foundation NEN fellowship, received the BOG excellence award as well as the IWSB entrepreneurial leader for the Class of 2011.

Ankita Gupta – A final year student and recipient of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women-National Entrepreneurship Network Fellow 2010 Award, Ankita is a perfect representation of the IWSB values. A consistent performer and leader throughout her academic life, for Ankita, the visit to an exhibition by the National Innovation Foundation last year was the start of a new journey.

Sahyog, a project initiated by IWSB alumnus Mr. Jaydeep Mandal of PG10 and his batchmates, Ankita worked along with her batchmate Shobhit of PG11, as a part of Sahyog to start and change the way woman in rural India lived. The project was about producing affordable sanitary napkins to facilitate better personal hygiene. Unlike most of us who see an idea, appreciate it and forget it, Ankita pursued it with passion. The woman of Sararsariya Village manufactured sanitary napkins at a small cost and retailed them within the community at an MRP of Rs. 2 per unit, bringing hygiene and livelihood to the village community. Now Ankita plans to join a young firm in the rural marketing space to gain precious experience to pursue her dream of rural entrepreneurship.

Tradition of creating entrepreneurs at IWSB

The very purpose of IWSB is to stoke entrepreneurial leadership and the results started to show from the first batch – class of 2010 itself.

• Prabhakar Borah and Jitumoni Mahanta from the class of 2010, started their venture in food processing – Fusions Eureka – in Guwahati even before they finished their PGPM

• Jaydeep Mandal, another class of 2010, MD-Aakaar Ventures, based out of Delhi, doing consultancy in the area of grassroots innovation to market place and has also launched a line of Herbal beauty products.

• Vipresh Sharma, class of 2010, First person to graduate from a farming family, went back to his roots in Aligarh to start Bhagwati Herbal Agro Solutions that focuses on organic farming and rural employment

• Saurav Goyal, during PGPM study, started exploring the education space. Finally on passing out, Saurav moved into open play schools in his home state of Chattisgarh

In the current passing out class of 2011

• Jayesh Suri, at the end of his first year, jumped into entrepreneurship along with his childhood friend, in his hometown of Ahmedebad. BLIS (Bhuved Land Information System) www.bhuved.in helps in understanding the existing land condition and future development of the area as planned by government development authority – the information which can be useful for builders, developers and constructions related business; also provides an ERP for mining industry which includes best choice of supplier information, billing, inventory management modules giving comprehensive site management capabilities.

• Krishna Boddapati Reddy has been running his educational consultancy for education abroad. He intends to spread this to cater to greater educational needs of the underprivileged children. He along with a few of his batchmates and pg12 batch have been proactively running the SEE (society for empowerment through education) program that teaches about 50 kids at IWSB.

• Sushant Yattam intends to open an Artist Microfinance Co., currently the model is functional in South Africa. He intends to import idea and the model to India. It intends to promote the artists that are unable to get a proper platform due to financial support. We are sure Sushant will find his place in the space

In the present batch (2010-2012) four students have already start their own ventures.

• Kanu Mangotra – (JMD’z Pratza) A first year student has turned a simple idea around to meet the obvious needs of the college community that she is part of. Kanu supplies burgers to canteens of colleges in Greater Noida. It started with eight pieces and one canteen, and now she is the regular supplier to two institutes with two more in the bag to be started right after her first year exams. Kanu currently employs one woman, a widow, and her association with the Society for Empowerment through Education (SEE) at IWSB has given her the idea of employing woman who work as construction workers and are looking at better work environments. With her workforce set, Kanu plans to take a few classes from her Hotel Management friends to obtain know-how on upgrading and preserving quality. Her next steps include starting a kiosk at the institute, taking care of catering services and supplying to one of the large eatery chain in the country, with her precious profits till date acting as seed fund.

• Sumeet Sharma has also made a small beginning with another student Arpit Kala (Concern – NOW) that is into retailing perishable food products to hostels and homes. Additionally he is exploring the possibility of putting up a unit making bullet proof jacket.

• Syed Inam ul Arsh is from Jammu & Kashmir who is actively working on creating an educational consultancy in Srinagar. After completion of the course he intends to take his educational avenue guidance consultancy for the young generation of Jammu & Kashmir to the next level. His motivations, locating of gap and an opportunity to help fellow citizens.

There are a few more who are rearing to take off in their second year of the programme with business plans in place. Long live the entrepreneurial spirit of the institution and the country.

sreeni@iwsb.in

E-Bootcamp @IWSB – Eurekas, WOWs and Tête-à-têtes with Entrepreneurs and Investors

E-Bootcamp at IWSB Campus

E-Boot Camp at IWSB on Dec 4, 2010.

IWSB campus not only wore a festive look but also had many eager learners from various institutions and corporate who were there to listen, interact, participate, share their ideas and seek opinions and advise on their ideas.

It was an amazing day the budding entrepreneurial aspirants for sure, but the dozen wizened entrepreneurs and investors, who took time off to spend their precious time to be at the event, were left inspired by the eagerness of the students and entrepreneurial aspirants.

There were three panel discussions and interactions followed by a session by Sreeni – “Think Big, Start Small”, that focused on breaking the myths about ‘starting a business with sophisticated ideas and big money that we want’

The first of the panel discussion had three eminent personalities – Girish Batra (Alum IIMA), Founder, NetAmbit; Vivek Agarwal (Alum IIMC), Founder, Liquid and eGurucool; and Gagan Kumar (Alum IIMB), Accel Partners,  representing the world of ‘investors’. The session was moderated by Girish Batra.

The second panel had Shantanu Prakash (Alum IIMA), founder Educomp; Gautam Puri (Alum IIMB) co-founder CL;Sreeni (Alum IIMB) co-founder CL and Director IWSB;

The third panel had  Vivek Bihani (Alum IIMB) and Co-founder Magic Software and Founder InSync advisors and Arindam (Alum IIML) Director IWSB and co-founder CL

Here in is the capture of the first panel discussion on “Opportunities – discovering one”

The inaugural address with the first panel – Girish, Gagan and Vivek

Moderator – Girish : Q. How do you create an Idea? How do you think about being an entrepreneur? What is the motivation of becoming one?

Me too challenges are higher. Thinking need to be unique. How do you chase about going ahead.

Capital and manpower are challenges in the initial stages. Examples are few, resources are limited, less control on resources, capital, challenges you go through; can you anticipate some of them, how do you bring risk mitigation;

Gagan –

Discount whatever I say, since I am only a facilitating person. Girish and Vivek have created business

Why become an entrepreneur in the first place? Even if you have taken a call, it is a fashion today to say I want to be an entrepreneur!!

Vivek –

That is the basic question. It cannot be over emphasized. Why are we getting into this?

I was reading a quote – “Lot of start-ups do not succeed. Those who succeed are the happiest people in the world” –

You have got to select a problem to solve. And if you do, you will make huge monies. You are wondering what next. It is worth taking a shot. Not having to say later on, why have I not taken the shot? I never really wanted to do it, because never wanted to say to my children – “ I did not try”

Gagan –

I was at IIMB a couple of weeks ago at an entrepreneurial event – you need to evaluate first why you want to get into it. It is going to be a grind.  70 Lakhs additional people joining Facebook every month, what could have been the initial motivation? It is paying dividends now, after all the grind put the people behind.

You can go to corporate, enjoy life, 5-9 job. So if you are convinced of a job you should go there. Go only when you are going to enjoy..

I also look at Satya – Way back in 1993, I thought as much as many others ‘Eh kya karega, padhayega ‘(what is this fellow going to do? Teach?). We all were ridiculing in those days. Look at today, we think “arey yaar hame kyon yeh vision nahin tha!”

You need to be prepared for a number of challenges …I am sure Satya will have hundreds of stories to tell..

Girish –

When I look back, in 1999, when I took this challenge.. I felt I was looking for happiness. Lot of times our actions are determined by what we do…  Now 4000 people strong, may be 7000 people strong pretty soon..

It feels good to see giving back to the society.

So questions are – What is your aspiration? What you are looking at? I was speaking to a friend from IIMA. I realized that his aspiration is not to scale up. If you really want to do business, your path should be clear – the actions you take, the plan you want to follow.. Yes, luck does play some role too…

What is the end-goal in your mind and start working towards it. What would you be like when you are 40-45?

Moderator – Girish : What do you think makes an Idea succeed?

Gagan –

Team, market size of the idea, customers tracking, scalability, certainly differentiating factors, what works, who pays for it… so many questions to be explored

Last 2 years we have done 20 odd investments at the seed stage.

At most of the companies what they are today was not what they started with..

• A Social networking company, started off well… but today it is SAS platform for recruiters.

No idea is bad. It may not be fundable initially but if the idea can make some segment happy about using the product or service, I am sure the Idea will succeed eventually.

Vivek –

Another way of what they are sharing is..

There is a lifestyle business. One gentleman came and was speaking to me. He is aggregation of courses for people. Do you want your son to take over your business at some time? He said yes. Perhaps he is in a lifestyle business… it is a family-centric approach.

Pursing one idea aggressively. You may want to corporatize. If it works fine, else you may to shut shop. In this model you may have partners and in terms of product and people may grow huge..

No bad ideas, as Gagan mentioned. When I started eGurucool, we prepared a vision of what we wanted to do. We spoke to investment bankers. We were discouraged from raising funds, since everyone asked for documentation of idea and plan … How can we send it across, someone may copy it. It was stupid, we realized later. How will anyone fund without sharing your ideas?

There were 75 companies that were working on the same idea. We raised capital and we executed better. If you are the only one working on an idea, perhaps then the idea may not be with potential. Google guys were willing to sell the idea to yahoo and but yahoo thought it was too expensive and not worth it… now look at google, when they executed the idea!

Good Idea with bad execution does not succeed. But a bad idea with good execution can take it long.

Look at what your interests are.

Two of my friends set up an HR firm. Why will anyone fund you?  Software platform that will reduce the work; I had asked how will you do it without a techie.

Steve jobs said “Steve wozniac; I got a techie to be my co-founder”

So first know what you really like and what you do not have and get people with that expertise…

Girish

Execution is the key to success. It is a lot about being practical, pragmatic and you should have your eyes and ears close to the ground. You need to have the ability to learn fast and quick. Name of the game is execution.

If you have an idea where there are already a few players, kindly find gaps – product side, services side….

Always go to people who have experience in your domain to get their opinions. Bouncing off with people. Do not be hesitant to share idea. The real success is in execution and not in just idea. Idea has to be good, but execution can make a killing out of even a mundane idea, else we kill a brilliant idea.

E-Bootcamp at IWSB Campus – The audience and the arena

Vivek

Try out a few ideas in the campus itself. Pool 1000 rupees and create small businesses of selling ICECREAMS, TSHIRTS etc. a lot of learning happens through…

Girish

Challenges are plenty. Journey is going to be bumpy. You will not have the support systems you want. You will have to be aware and try how to mitigate the challenges early.

Challenges will be on multiple fold – Supply as well as Demand side ..

• sourcing raw material
• people : how do you attract talent; you wear all the caps initially, but how do you attract the people…
• market side
• demand side
• regulatory compliance

You will have bad and good times. How do you take care of personal and emotional challenges.

Moderator – Girish : How will you take care of challenges?

Vivek –

I will share from my experiences –

You have to be convinced and passionate about your idea… you have to be stubborn headed about it. Think that the whole world is wrong…What is the ideal way of building business?

If I were to do a business today, let us take online community business.. If I were a good techie, I will get a good marketing guy or otherwise. I will spend some good money and put the website. I will outsource or get people on contract. Get good feedback from early users and then reach out to the angel investors..

Have a couple of co-founders, with supplementary and complementary skills. Then  keep the costs low

Make sure your expenses are behind the cash flows. Kindly keep raising capital, so that you can move faster

Getting into execution – You will have to be the chief techie, chief peon…. That is the part of the early growth process. It is not going to be easy.

There are a set of trade-offs, it helps you to understand which way you are going..

Let us say you are selling HR software…making recruitment process easier. Girish, may say I need finance also, I am tempted to get that too…It is always good to get your core competence and what you want to build… stick to it..

People – when you hire people, we get equity and … ‘

‘Hire for Attitude, and train for skills’ we need people who are flexible and dynamic. As you grow you need people with grey hair… Getting one good guy than four compromises is better. You may need to even pay him more that what you make for yourself, but just do it.

The eminent visitors sharing a laughter

Gagan –

In campus we hang on with same friends. Try to create teams that are very diverse. Get the complementary skills..

Ego: Who will be the CEO. Whom should I speak to? He should be outgoing, good sales man, he has to be the face of the company; The one who grinds should be COO. Being humble is one of the critical traits we should look for..

Q&A

We start with our own 2-4 lacs and I do not want to go to anyone else if I want to get 10-15 lacks they may give, with many stings attached. What does the panel have to say about it

Panel –

If you want to have 10 lacs, I think you will have to get it from friends. If you need 40-50 lacs then you may enthuse investors. Get 20-25 lacs from angels; get things going

Prove your idea with your own money before you can convince others…

I feel you need to get rid off “Strings Attached”.

Size of the market? How do you evaluate…

You need to get the size of the market certainly for any idea.. Even if you are coming out with a completely new product, you should understand the need and wants. Estimate what will satisfy and how much will the demand be. Do a survey that will give reasonable data to crunch..

After starting  business after investing 20-30 lakhs and feel I need more money?

I started my business with 1 Lakh. It is a complete misnomer to feel that you need very big investments.

It is important to distinct between personal capital and capital for growth

How do you get on to the good execution?

1. Two kids – Flipcart – selling books online – we said kaun kharidta hai

• Showed traffic and transactions
• Then we took the plunge
• Entry barriers – A large book store said they already had gone online and they are multiple times of Flipcart
• But in a couple of months Flipcart became a multiple of the stores
• Good search engine work

• So PROOF OF concept is important at the same time keep your eye on costs, that is the key.

• Does being introvert not help in setting up a business?

1. 1. It is not about idea, it is all about execution..
   2. No body is going to fund us only on idea..
   3. You need to talk about your idea to a host of others
   1. i.      Customers
      ii.      People to recruit

• One team that has won many b-plan competitions but has not started the enterprise yet… Conviction and willingness to slog is the key

So if you are an introvert, but have ideas and are willing to work hard, find someone who will front-end your interactions with external world. Because networking and interacting will take your “proof of concept” to the outside world.

(the interaction is not complete, as I had to rush out of the hall).. Will write the other panel interaction in a separate blog

Kindly leave your comments or write to sreeni@iwsb.in

‘Summer Internship – A waste of time?’ by Prof. Arindam Lahiri, Executive Director, Indus World School of Business



Does summer internship really contribute substantially to the learning process of a business management graduate?

There are arguments on both sides and both views can be logical. Before we delve into this, let us take a look at the process of management education. During the first year of the usual 2-year MBA programme, a student is exposed to the various functions of an organization. This prepares the student for the foundations of management theory. However, management education in hardly academic in nature – it has a strong focus on applying the same in real life situation and this transition is difficult.

My own view is that the summer internship provides you with the best opportunity to attempt at making this transition. And most students fail while making this transition, as this is the first time that most of them are attempting such a transition. Yes, even for the students having pre-programme work experience – since it is the first time that they will attempt to put management theory (which most of them are not aware of, except for undergraduate management students) into practice.

It is this failure that raises a question mark over the entire practice of summer internship. And most students do not fail only once at this summer internship. They fail a number of times subsequently in their first job. This also raises another issue about a large percentage of management graduates leaving their first job within the first 12 months – we will not get into this here.

Learning through failure is an important pedagogical tool. A summer internship allows student to get frustrated and underscores the challenge of application of management theories in practice. Such an exposure, if absorbed internally in a constructive manner, can be one of the most important learning for the student. The student, with the help from his faculty members, must analyze the challenges of application and failure points. Understanding the constraints and parameters within which various theoretical constructs are applied is important. And without repeated practice, this is difficult to achieve.

However, once word of caution at this point, one must be careful about internships where the student is completely left on his own and not challenged to deliver. In such a case, opportunities to fail, is minimal. Though the internship experience may be comfortable, the learning may be incomplete.

Using the opportunity of summer internship to understand how organizations work, especially how people in the organizations behave, is a must learn for all management students. It also helps the students to establish some useful networking relations. At the same time, it allows the student to gain self-confidence by comparing his own efforts with other existing employees in the organization. It helps a student identify his strength and weakness for effective working in the organization.

A summer internship may add more value to people who have worked for less than 2 years with an organization. The challenge in most cases, result from expectation mismatch of the student and the organization. The core objective is that the need for summer internship is of the student and not necessarily a need of the organization. The onus is on the student to make the most out of this opportunity.

A summer internship has been a life-changing experience for a large number of students (and these students are not necessarily the students with pre-placement offers from organizations). It impacts the choice of organization, functions and the pace of career growth of an individual.

Research paper from Prof. Arindam Lahiri(Executive Director – IWSB) got selected at IIM Ahmedabad.

Title of paper:  Role of Vocational Education and Training in mitigating the challenges of inclusive growth in emerging economies

About the article:

The paper examines the challenges of capacity building and its linkage to the overall challenges of inclusive growth in emerging economies. The Indian formal education sector has not included vocational education and training (VET) as an inherent part of capacity building. Over a period of six decades post-independence, the initial focus has been lost and today we end up with a capacity mismatch of VET capacity in formal sector vis-à-vis the workforce that enters the Indian labour market for the first time. The case studies include the social impact of the capacity development initiatives and compare it with such initiatives being undertaken with other emerging economies around the globe. The research firmly emphasizes that inclusive growth and empowerment in emerging economies can happen through vocational education and training.