Tuesday 13 March 2012

ENSPIRIT 2012 was a befitting platform for the entrepreneurs of one of the fastest growing states of the country



The two day entrepreneurship summit ENSPIRIT 2012 witnessed motivating stories of many entrepreneurs at same stage. This was a completely new kind of experience for budding engineers and managers of Raipur. The event was graced by the Director of the Institute, Prof. B.S. Sahay. Shrimati Padmashri Phoolbasan Yadav was the Chief Guest for the event. She has been the reason behind the emergence of the women empowerment in and around the villages of Rajnandgaon.
Eminent personalities who attended the event were :
Shri Lalit Surjan – Editor-in-Chief , Deshbandhu
Mr. Rustam Upadhyay – CEO , Boond. Boond is a social enterprise working towards the purification of water in various parts of the country.
Mr. Vikram Kant Upadhyay – Investor from Indian Angel Network
Mr. Sachin Iyer – President, The Indus Entrepreneurs, Nagpur
The event began with the Director’s message. Prof. Sahay started by acknowledging the presence of Padmashri Phoolbasan Ji. He pointed out the difficulties faced by her describing the journey that took her from her very humble background to where she is at present. He denounced the need for any educational qualification for bringing about change in society. He emphasised the importance of a strong will and leadership, coupled by the urge to do something, as the main factors for acting on the same. On this moment, he also introduced a new course “Rural Immersion Program”, which would be made mandatory for the students of IIM Raipur. The motive of this program would be to teach the students a thing or two about the way of living of people in the rural areas. This would be of added advantage as the world is moving towards the rural plethora as the urban scenario gets saturated. This would help the students in developing innovative ways to make maximum use of rural marketing in the future.
Prof. Sahay also signified the importance of the event “Enspirit ‘12”. As the state of Chhattisgarh is growing at a rate increasing every year, more and more jobs need to be created. To stabilise the growth of the state, there have to be more job creators than those present, rather than just giving rise to job seekers. In his words, “Enspirit ’12 is the celebration of ideas”. He announced that students of IIM Raipur shall compulsorily undergo  one week of rural stint with her organization

The Chief Guest of the event, Shrimati Padmashri Phoolbasan Yadav took over from the Prof. Sahay. She began with proclaiming her love for the land by speaking out the following words :
“Bharat Maata ki Jai” (which means “Long Live India”)
She continued by saluting the parents and their children who thought about the country and helped in the social cause benefitting others. Throughout this, she maintained her pride and dignity of being from Chhattisgarh by speaking in the local dialect. She went on to describe the hardships that she had to face in achieving the successes for which she has been applauded. She remembered each one of those tough moments, and the methodologies that she employed for overcoming them. She acknowledged the help of Mr.  Dinesh Shrivastava, Collector of the area where she resided.  According to her the most important things were “The Power to Dream” and “The Power of Unity”. She mixed each of these to her advantage and came out trumps in the most tiring of situations. Even after accomplishing a name for herself, Shrimati Padmashri Phoolbasan Ji still lives in the house in Rajnandgaon, and has not added any of that to her wealth. Instead, she has used all of them for the society’s welfare at large. She ended with the same feeling of patriotism by singing a song dedicated to the cause of bringing change in society for everyone’s good.
The business plan competition that followed later had teams participating from premier institutes of the country and saw entries from London Business School, University of California and IITs and IIMs from all over the country. The plans were evaluated by Mr Rustom Sen Gupta, CEO Boond, Mr Sachin Iyer, President TiE Nagpur along with Mr Vikram Kant Upadhyay an investor affiliated with Indian Angel Network. In the end the contest was won by Plan My Health, a start-up from IIM Bangalore. Their business plan is to take quality daily health care to villages of India. They won a cash of prize of Rs 50,000 and have a funding opportunity of up to Rs 50 lakh.
The 2nd day of Enspirit ’12 picked up from where the 1st day had terminated. The schedule was planned to give the speakers, the forum to interact with the students of IIM Raipur and with each other.
Mr. Satyan Mishra, Co-Founder & MD, Drishtee Foundation, was the Chief Guest for the day and Mr. Bahadur Ali, MD, IB Group, was the Guest of Honor. Other eminent personalities who graced the occasion were:
Mr. Abhishek Sinha, CEO, EKO India Financial Services
Mr. Nirmal Kumar, Founder, Nirmal Group
Mr. Snehanand Sinha, Advisor to Social Businesses
Mr. Phanindra Sama, CEO, Redbus
Mr. Rustam Sengupta, CEO, BOOND
Mrs. Rashmi Bansal, Author & Entrepreneur
The day began with the students rendering their voices to the Saraswati Vandana followed by the lighting of the lamp.
The Director of IIM Raipur, Prof. B.S.Sahay, continued from where he had left the previous day. He emphasized the importance of IIM Raipur towards the development of the state of Chhattisgarh. He notified the high level of involvement of the top brass of bureaucracy in the smooth functioning of the Institute and their encouragement in hiring the students as summer interns. All of this was discussed in the context of the fraction of students opting out of the usual passages to placements. The percentage of students opting a different path was scarce and thus the no. of entrepreneurs churned out each year was getting affected. He repeatedly pointed out the significance of “job creators” with respect to those being “job seekers”.
Mr. Satyan Mishra took the baton from Prof. Sahay. He discussed the various hurdles that he faced before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship. The first of these factors was family pressure, which accounted for most of the dropouts from this field. His confidence helped him all along the way in countering the doubts of his kith and kin, while his will power and strong determination took him from one pedestal of success to another. He described his organization “Drishtee Foundation” and showcased various values and principles which formed the base of the entity. His eyes filled with excitement as he described the way in which he and his team forecasted and planned for the future. The future he referred to were decades in making, thus signifying his organization’s role in improving the preparedness of the people involved. In spite of all this, every methodology adopted by him reflected reality in every way possible.
Mr. Bahadur Ali had built an expectation in the minds of the students even before he came on to the podium to share his life. He narrated his story of building an empire called the IB Group. One simple idea of opening a poultry farm which would give healthy food to everyone who was catered brought another phase to it. He marketed himself as providing proteins to the needy of the villages in and around Rajnandgaon. He had a vision of improving the health situation of his people as first and foremost. But, this novel idea took years of working before establishing IB Group as the main suppliers of “proteins”. Mr. Ali had to deduce an operation and supply system to increase the scope of his business. This was essential as he didn’t intend to work from anywhere else other than Rajnandgaon. This forced him to decline offers of moving to mote cities with more population. He still managed to convert IB Group into an organization that stands at a turnover of over 1500 crores but based in a small village of Rajnandgaon. But, he did all of this with the help of his trusted aides and his own will strength. 
In the after lunch session, speakers like Mr. Nirmal Kumar, Mr. Abhishek Sinha, Mr. Phanindra Sama, Mr. Rustam Sen Gupta, Mr. Ajit Varwandkar and Mrs. Rashmi Bansal shared their entrepreneurship experiences. Mr. Nirmal Kumar, a pass out from IIM Ahmedabad told about his moment of conceptualizing the G-Auto venture when one night he was overcharged by an auto driver and told how his business has broken the myth that people don’t use auto rickshaw for reaching or leaving airports. Mr. Abhishek Sinha emphasized on the perseverance part by saying that one has to come into the condition of being stripped first, a point from where one can’t lose more. From that point one starts gaining for sure. Mr. Phanindra Sama furthered this point by saying that the whole world conspires to fulfill one’s dream if one sincerely makes effort for something. Mr. Sama gave various examples from his RedBus story to prove his point. He answered various questions in a funny manner with a smiling face but still each of his answers explained the connection of dots to construct the big picture of RedBus. Mr. Rustam Sen Gupta brought back the energy to the afternoon session by delivering a motivating speech covering almost all the points from the two day program. He especially praised the leadership qualities of Padamshree Phoolbasan Yadav who rose from the bottom of the pyramid to bring about a change in the society around her. Mr Ajit Varwandkar talked about how conditions for carrying out any business have changed in a favorable manner in last decade and how his organization is working for education in naxalite hit areas. Mrs. Rashmi Bansal concluded the daylong session by talking about opportunities in various fields. She mentioned that it is not necessary in today’s era to think in an orthodox manner and one can always explore new fields as the opportunities are immense in every field. 

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