The 2nd National Entrepreneurship Summit[/b], 2012 at IIM Kozhikode, organized by the Entrepreneurship Cell, started off on a high note on October 27, 2012 with an inaugural lecture by Sri Raghunath Medge[/b], President of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Association[/b] famously known as the “Mumbai Dabbawallahs[/i][/b]”. With the theme- “Redefining Entrepreneurship: More than starting up”, [/b]the two-day summit promises to bring together ideas and resources from across the state that would boost budding entrepreneurs in their efforts to start a business.
Soon after, Mr. Kartik Vaidyanathan[/b], Founder, Free Energy[/b] shared his entrepreneurial story. Fresh out of IIM Ahmedabad, Mr. Vaidyanathan went on to work as a consultant at Bain and Company for three years. Tired of the daily rigmarole of making presentations and creating value for others’ businesses, he decided to give entrepreneurship a shot. Just 5 months into implementing his B-plan, he had a beginner’s perspective to the experience of starting up a company and the difficulties it entails. He cautioned aspiring entrepreneurs them not to be in a hurry to pursue an attractive idea and said that the key was to look at sectors which were experiencing a lot of growth.
Ms. Rashmi Bansal,[/b] who is a writer, entrepreneur, youth expert and the proud author of four best-selling books on entrepreneurship, shared experiences from her life and hoped that it would resonate with the audience. She recounted her innate passion for writing and sending articles to newspapers. She made reference to the book “Outliers” and emphasized the fact that to succeed in any given field, one needs to put in at least 10,000 hours of practice. She envisaged upon the fact that having mere talent doesn’t imply that the door to success will open. One needs to have perseverance to pursue the goal. She advised the audience to choose a newly emerging field like energy, infrastructure, digital marketing and learn to deal with uncertainty. Rashmi believes that there is no right time to start except now. She concluded the talk with her message of dreaming big, even if it sounds impractical or foolish.
The audience was then addressed by Mr. Sanjay Anandram[/b] who has about 24 years of experience as an entrepreneur. He is the founding partner of Jump Startup Venture Fund[/b], a pioneering early stage US-India cross border VC fund set up in the year 2000. He is a charter member of TIE Bangalore and teaches Business Plan Workshop as visiting faculty in INSEAD business school, Singapore. He shared his thoughts on the topic “Entrepreneurial mindset – Its more than a startup
The final talk of the day was by Ms.Parvathi Menon, founder, Innovation Alchemy. Over her 15-year career in the corporate and entrepreneurial space, Parvathi has built a repertoire of knowledge in designing and implementing innovation solutions for corporate firms and she shared her journey and the lessons learnt from it with the audience. From defining entrepreneurship to the motivation behind it, she crystallized the intangible aura that surrounds entrepreneurship. Laying stress on entrepreneurship with a purpose, she advocated the mantra -“Focus not just on an enterprise but on creating a relevant enterprise that potentially solves massive challenges and gaps.” She strongly urged budding entrepreneurs to “lift heavy weights” or in other words “make a big dent” and not just tackle problems on a small scale. She held a workshop for the audience on Innovation and startups.