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.
