Mangaluru: The MBA department of AIMIT (St. Aloysius Institute of Management and Information Technology), St. Aloysius College (Autonomous) in association with Kanara Global Entrepreneurs, had organised a one-day Entrepreneurship Development Programme (EDP) on February 9 for the second year MBA students.
Vathika Pai, President of the Kanara Chamber of Commerce & Industry was the chief guest for the inauguration of EDP-2018. Her insights on overcoming the hurdles faced by potential entrepreneurs with practical ideas, served as a good start for a productive day. The main focus was on how to be successful entrepreneurs, establish their own rules and succeed even if they fall a couple of times in this life long journey. She spoke about the “Centre for Entrepreneurship and Learning” and its pros for a budding entrepreneur.
Fr. Denzil Lobo SJ, Director, AIMIT delivered the presidential address emphasising on the passion for carrying out a business. He portrayed the journey of a passion which turns into an obsession and an idea becoming a reality. He put forth an example of a bunch of entrepreneurial personalities who strove towards becoming successful and concluded with Elon Musk’s famous quote, “Work super hard.”
The certificates of the online course on entrepreneurship from Santa Clara University, California were handed over to the student coordinators Rahul Udyawar, Prajwal Sequeira, Hasna and Aisiri by Vathika Pai. In all, 227 students completed this MOOC course.
Rahul Udyawar, student coordinator welcomed the gathering while Hasna Veeran, student coordinator proposed a vote of thanks. Dr. Rowena Wright, Dean-Academics and Swapna Rose, faculty coordinator were also present. Aisiri and Prajwal compered the inaugural function.
There were four sessions conducted and the first session was addressed by Annappa Pai, who is the director of ACE Foods Pvt. Ltd. He focused on his journey as an entrepreneur. His business of manufacturing started due to the non-availability of tasty potato chips in the city as compared to Mumbai. The idea of becoming an entrepreneur gained momentum while travelling to explore various possibilities to start a new business. He stressed on the importance of analysing before acting. His suggestions to young entrepreneurs were to focus on the product, quality and customer rather than the money. He also said it would be useful to learn new languages to communicate with the suppliers, dealers, service providers and customers. Success doesn’t happen overnight is what he concluded his session with.
The second speaker for the day was C A Chandrakanth Rao who spoke on the formalities of starting a new business with utmost emphasis laid on financial management and allocation of monetary resources. He spoke on the importance of never giving up when one decides to start a new business. He spoke on the relevance of a good business plan/framework prior to starting a business. Speaking about the financial aspect of business, he explained about the sources of funds, forms of funds which vary from business to business and also the mobilisation of funds. He guided the budding entrepreneurs on what they need to focus on when it comes to the financial planning of a business. He threw some light on how the funds would appear in the Profit and Loss Statement and how to present the project report while seeking funds from a bank. He also shared important information on the legal aspects and compliance factors while starting a business.
The third session in the afternoon was addressed by K Nikesh Shetty, an advocate. He gave the attendees a list of steps to be followed before starting a business. He spoke about the importance of the certificate of incorporation and the legal consequences that an entrepreneur will have to face if they failed to abide with the legal rules and regulations. He also gave the attendees a set of legal acts related to Labour legislation and concluded with a brief note on Intellectual Property Rights.
The last session was taken over by Rajendra Desai, an in-house resource person who spoke about the relevance of marketing in connection with a budding entrepreneur. He spoke about his experience as an entrepreneur in the past. The challenges and pros of self-employment. His main focus was on doing things in a better way. With good marketing, sales becomes irrelevant, and this was best explained by Desai taking the example of the iPhone. It was a an interactive session.
Some student entrepreneurs from among the Aloysians were picked up. Prajwal Sequeira, Calwin D’Cunha, Sada Muneeb and Hameed Nadeem shared their entrepreneurial journey as a Web-Designer, an Event Manager, a Tissue Manufacturer and an Interior Designer, respectively. Sometimes, examples from among the gathering help in understanding entrepreneurial development better.
On the whole, the workshop paved a path to be more informative, interactive and gave the students a full-fledged insight to becoming successful entrepreneurs.
