A students view on Live Projects and Workhops @ FMS Delhi

Campuspreneur @ FMS – 13th,14th,15th August, 2011

I participated in the Campuspreneur Workshop conducted by Mr. Aalok Pandey on 13th,14th,15th August, 2011. I had high expectations from it as I plan to start a venture of my own as soon as possible and seek mentorship and guidandance on various aspects includingTraining, Transformation, Incubation, Mentoring, Seedfunding, Investing, Scaling, VC, PE, & IPO.

The Campuspreneur program has a Network association of over 182 Investors, tie-ups across 13 major incubation agencies, and over 25 professional mentors.  They promise 'Idea-to-IPO'. Training, Incubation, Mentoring, Investing for free.Their mission is stated as : To start 'Entrepreneurship' as another vertical at colleges, apart from the conventional 'Employee'.

The mission is to create over 10,000 Campuspreneurs, from the colleges in a year, which in turn will 'Create Employment' of over 2 lakh jobs a year. The workshop saw enthusiastic participation from students of FMS, DSE and other DU colleges as well as working professionals and seasoned entrepreneurs.

Day1:

Started at 9.00 am sharp with “ Introduction and Need for Entrepreneurship” by Aalok Pandey. He presented various essentials for an entrepreneur and shared his personal experience as an Entrepreneur. He chose to work in the sanitation field after working for 15 years in the automobile sector. As he was into the manufacturing of a special self-cleaning toilet he had interesting insights on the product patenting process and the investment required to create barriers for competition.

We then had “Journey of an Entrepreneur” where heard from  Mr Akshay Chhugani – CEO – Indianbackpacker.com. He told us how he started this novel website with a paltry investment of Rs. 9000 and nothing but a personal consumer insight. He talked about the many obstacles and struggles he faced while at the same time reassuring us that it’s not that tough once you get down to it.

Towards the end of the session we discussed Case studies. Each participant was asked to come up with an innovative new market segment currently underserved for the website: shaadi.com

Day2:

We had sessions on “Understanding Business” and “Identification of Business Opportunity”. Then we had an Ideation session which was a very unique experience. We were divided into groups and expected to come up with a enterprising new business idea. All of us brainstormed for hours to decide the feasibility and attractiveness of various ideas. Aalok kept offer support and inputs to each team during the ideation process. After the brainstorming was over, we had presentations from each team on their ideas.

Some of the ideas presented were:

1. Computer Training Centers in rural areas : Low cost computers in rural towns along with trainers set up to offer various computer application courses employing a blue ocean strategy

2. Paper Jewellery: Costume jewelery that looks like real jewellery sold in various product and price ranges banking on its USP of being heavily customizeable

3. Reverse auction model for airline ticket pricing – website

All these ideas were vetted by Aalok and he gave critical suggestions for improvements on each .

Day3:

The most exciting day wherein we actual got to pitch to an investor - Mr Rammohan Sundaram – CEO – Networkplay.in. But prior to that we had a very informative session on Incubation support for Entrepreneurs by Dr. Anil Wali – MD, FITT @IIT_D. He told us of various support systems in the entrepreneurship ecosystem and informed us about various government initiatives as well as private and academic programs for incubation and support.

Later we gained from the industry perspective of Mr. Nitin Rai – Head Strategy – IBM who shared his career experience and explained the importance of strategy and vision in any organization.

Finally we had Rammohan Sundaram – CEO – Networkplay.in come and vet our respective B-plans. We had worked on a format provided to us by campuspreneur for 2 days and each team was excited about pitching to a real investor. Aalok wanted us to have a first hand experience of pitching to an investor and I will surely not forget this one.

We presented our B-Plan on Computer Training Centers in Rural areas and barely 1 min into the presentation Ram offered to fund us. He first questioned the business idea , then looked at the financials and finally questioned our commitment to the venture. He was willing to at the drop of a hat invest Rs.5 lakh in a business idea he thought would work without too much of a hustle. On the other hand several other ideas were criticized for loopholes and fallacies. This was a very helpful insight into VC behavior and I think I benefitted from the experience.

Future :

After clearing phase II Workshop, Campuspreneur invited us to Phase III for Incubation and other support, that we may require for starting up with your plan. As a prelude to that, we were required to kindly draft the business plan as per the instructions given in the session, and send it back to them for review. On fitment, they would send it to Investors, upon which we may be initiated pitching further on the funding processes. Once the Business plan has cleared the investment round, we would be initiated with our Knowledge Partner TBIU@IIT_D and IAN Incubator @IAN. Around our idea, we were required to be ready to form a private limited company for getting into the investment process, in case an investor sees potentiality into the Idea.

Aakash Apoorva Oza