The legacy of i2i has grown in proportions over the years. i2i’08 and i2I’9 became platform for 7 finalists to launch their own firms successfully. i2i’10 has succeeded in raising the bar even further by going International for the first time and by offering intense competition and excitement.

The Jury panel consisted of Mr. Sanjoy Sanyal, New Ventures; Mr. Amit Anand, Venturegurus; Mr. Deepak Daftari, Founder Eshiksha.com; Mr. Anil Joshi, Mumbai Angel Network; Mr. Vasant Subramanyam,  President Tie Kolkata; Mr. Nirav Sanghavi, CEO & Founder Blogadda.com; Mr. Probir Gupta, Ex-Executive Director TIE Kolkata; Mr. Ashish Jain, Bharti Airtel Innovation Funds.

Judging the best amongst the 12 teams was a real challenge for all the jury members as they found all the plans to have good growth opportunities and market potential. At the end, however business plans presented by teams “˜Dare to Soar’ from SP Jain and FTN from IIM Calcutta were bagged the competition and were identified as fundable and VCs indicated their wish to follow up with them in the future

As we all know that Success is not necessarily defined by winning, so we wish Good luck to all the competitors and hopefully the rundown of advice from our Jury panellists and eminent industrialists proves beneficial to them in the long run and helps them in soaring great heights. We also hope that the next retreat will offer a similar rich feast of new and vibrant ideas.

Last weekend, a bunch of accomplished Entrepreneurs addressed an audience of budding Entrepreneurs of IIM Calcutta and other B-Schools in and around Kolkata. With a plethora of personal experiences and a great deal of valuable knowledge about dynamics of starting ones own business to offer, they ignited the young minds with a spirit of Entrepreneurship.

Ascent, the annual Entrepreneurship Summit conducted jointly by the Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) and the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI), IIM Calcutta, took place in great style over this past weekend, with leading venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, newspaper columnists and diplomats sharing the dias.

Ascent is an initiative to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship in the country, by bringing together entrepreneurs and young management students for a free exchange of views and ideas. The two day event was attended by participants from close to 10 colleges from this eastern part of the country. The event aimed at providing young managerial students an overview of the various challenges they would face in an entrepreneurial career, and to equip them with the knowledge, acumen and support they would require to start and successfully run their businesses.

The first day started off with a keynote address by Mr. Bipin K. Vohra, Chairman, NSHM Knowledge campus, and President of the Rs.3500 crore SPS Group. Mr. Vohra, in an inspirational speech, discussed how he started his business from scratch, the challenges he faced on the way, and the lessons he learnt.

In the next session, Mr. Hari Bala, CEO of OnTrack Systems, held an interactive session that introduced the audience to Roger Hamilton’s Wealth Dynamics – a profiling system that assesses one’s personality. The most engaging part of his talk was when he asked a couple of people to volunteer and identified their wealth profiles and suggested areas they would be well suited for.  One could be from the 8 wealth profiles: The creator, Star, Supporter, Deal Maker, Trader, Accumulator, Lord and Mechanic, belonging to a particular profile deeply influences the way one works, and creates wealth. He suggested that the best way to be successful is to partner with people who have a complimentary wealth profile. Following this, a sense of introspection took over the audience.

Mr. Satya Prabhakar, CEO of Sulekha.com, easily the most engaging and charismatic speaker of the day, held an enthralling session about his learnings from running a venture as big as Sulekha. In his inimitable style, through a fun presentation made up entirely of what he called “The “˜Q’s,’Cs’ and “˜Vs’” (Quotes, Cartoons and Videos for the uninitiated), he stressed on the essential attitudes required to be a successful entrepreneur and manager. His delightful sense of humour and witty remarks had the audience smiling throughout the session.

One of the quotes that caught our fancy was:  “Entrepreneurship is like wooing a gorgeous girl. You need whole-hearted desire, complete commitment, unflagging perseverance, undivided attention and undying enthusiasm. Oh, you also need some moxie, chutzpah, daring and sacrifice. She may still not relent. But sometimes, with a bit of luck, she will, and that’s payday, buddy!”

He also spoke about the new ad campaign of Sulekha.com and enlightened the audience about the philosophy on which the brand is built.

The post-lunch session by Her Excellency, Beth Payne, U.S. Counsel General in Kolkata was focused on the importance of entrepreneurs in an economy, and on entrepreneurial and educational opportunities in the United States of America. She highlighted how keen she is to facilitate investments in India.

The final session for the day was by Ms. Swati Gautam, an impressive lady and a leading custom lingerie maker in Kolkata. In a candid and simple manner, she spoke about her journey as a businesswoman, and the challenges and rewards of being a woman entrepreneur.

The second day of Ascent began with a session by the famed Mr. Amitava Ghose on “How to make effective business plans”. A strategy and corporate finance specialist with twenty years of experience in corporate finance and international banking, he focused mainly on how to pitch for venture capital. The next session was by Rudra Kumar Roy, founder and Senior Product Manager at iViZ Techno Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which was awarded Business Today’s “˜Hottest Startup 2008′ title.  Drawing from his experiences in winning business plan competitions across business schools in India and venture capital for iViz Techno Solutions, he gave an enlightening presentation titled “˜The Art of B-plans’.

Post-lunch session of Day 2 saw the results for the much awaited and intensely contested case-study and B-plan competitions being announced. The Winners of the case study competition were declared from among 37 entries.

1st: Abhishek Chopra,

2nd: Harshvardhan Ketkar

3rd (Joint): Bhaskar Kashyap; Alpesh Chaddha; Sumit Chandra.

Winners of the business idea competition were:

First: Shreya Ginoria,

Second: Smita Singh & Shweta Poddar

Third(joint): Akshay Grover and Shruti Agrawal; Akshay Tapase.

The two esteemed guests then gave individual feedback to each of the participating teams of the B-Plan competition.

Mr. Suneet Singh Bhatia, Core member of E-Cell and one of the organizers of the event, said, “We’re very happy with the success of the event and the enthusiasm and interest shown by the participants. Most importantly, we value the opportunity we had to interact with some great entrepreneurs and leaders, and to hear their views on a range of topics”. Carrying a similar sentiment, Mr. Bhupesh Pangti, Core member of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, commented “With the enthusiasm levels seen in these two days, we believe that we have achieved our objective of benefiting the student body in IIMC and beyond”.

Mr. Manish Motwani, President of E-Cell said, “We look forward to organizing more such events for the students which can give them a head start in realizing their dreams as an entrepreneur. We will also bring in i2i soon to present students with further opportunity”. As a concluding remark, Mr. Arjun Khurana, President of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, added “We believe that with such kind of events, even if one “˜sleeping tiger’ of IIMC wakes up to the entrepreneurial success awaiting him, our mission is accomplished. We have started this year with a spark in Ascent, and will follow it up with a wildfire in E-Summit 2009″.

In all, the two days proved to be really inspiring and a huge value-addition for all the participants and organizers. As they often say in the world of entrepreneurship:

Let’s keep the fire burning!

With Contributions From,

Samyukktha, Spandana & Tanvi

Our Initiatives in past:

1. i2I: i2I (Ideas to Implementation) is E-Cell’s flagship event. Kicked off in 2001, it is widely accepted as one of the biggest business plan contests in Asia. Even in its formative years, the contest attracted numerous plans from all around the globe, extensive media coverage and venture funding for the finalists.
2. Ascent: Ascent is E-Cell IIM Calcutta’s annual workshop which is conducted at the beginning of the year to help the incoming batch of student get a hang of the phenomenan itself and get them acquainted with the support we can provide to help them start their own ventures.
3. Workshops:
   • Restaurant Workshop
   • Laboratory on Entrepreneurial Motivation: Sunil Handa
4. Talks and Lectures:
   • Madhukar Shukla (Prof. XLRI)
   • Ajit Balakrishnan (CEO, Rediff.com)
   • Mani Ratnam (Acclaimed Film Director)

Pathikrit Ghosh believes in doing his own thing. “I wanted to do something where I felt what I had learnt would be more relevant instead of sitting before a computer and typing codes,” says Ghosh, the lone first-year student at Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, or IIM-C, planning to take the start-up route.

And in these times of economic gloom, when even the best and brightest from India’s top business schools would prefer a steady job instead of starting a venture, Ghosh intends to set up a consultancy firm.

“I don’t think anyone from PGP-2 (the second year of the two-year postgraduate diploma programme in management) is seriously thinking of entrepreneurship as an option,” says Prafulla Agnihotri, placements chief at IIM-C.

This sentiment has not deterred Ghosh. While his classmates at IIM-C are sprucing up their CVs to ensure summer placements, he is working on updating his database of potential clients. “In about three months, I have built up a bank of 14,000 small and medium enterprises,” he says.

Ghosh quit a secure job as area sales manager at Indian Oil Corp. Ltd to join one of the country’s premier business schools to receive training to launch his own business, which he intends to call MyMa Consultancy Pvt. Ltd.

After graduating in 2004 with electronics and instrumentation from University of Madras, Ghosh joined an instrumentation firm called Eurotherm DEL India Pvt. Ltd and later IndianOil, where he worked for three and a half years. It was during his stint with the state-owned oil marketer that he firmed up plans to launch his own company. The people he met during his stint with IndianOil form the nucleus of the database for his start-up.

“There are lots of businesses that want to grow but not everyone can afford an A.T. Kearney or a McKinsey,” says Ghosh, who aims to offer quality consultancy at affordable prices by keeping overheads low. MyMa will initially focus on sales, business development and human resources consultancy. The idea of starting a consultancy struck him after he joined IIM-C. “Six hundred of the smartest minds in India who are here (at IIM-C) have acted as the catalysts for MyMa.”

IIM-C has two entrepreneurial cells that encourage students to launch businesses. The institute organizes an annual contest that gives students a chance to sell business plans to venture capital funds.

Last year, four business plans submitted by IIM-C students received venture capital funding, according to Paul Savio, who is a first-year student and the external relations secretary at the institute.

“This year, too, we have got commitment from funds for two proposals, but both are from people outside the institute,” he says. The contest is not restricted to students from IIM-C. “But at least seven more (proposals) are being considered by various venture capital funds and quite a few of them are from IIM-C,” Savio adds.

Ghosh believes people shouldn’t look at entrepreneurship only when the chips are down. “Entrepreneurship requires a passion to say no to a job with a multi-crore package during good times and not just as an option when the offers are not that good.”

Agnihotri also says entrepreneurship shouldn’t be considered as an option merely because the economy is going through a bad patch and jobs on offer during the placement season may not carry the astronomical pay packets people have come to associate with IIMs. “Entrepreneurship can’t be a by default option. You have to really believe in it.”

According to Savio, IIM students aren’t averse to the idea of launching ventures, but most want to work for a few years before taking the plunge. “There are many among us who would eventually launch his or her own business, but initially at least they would want to work to get some exposure in the industry,” he says.

Students other than Ghosh might have been forced to think of their own ventures but for the fact that the entire batch will surely get placed despite the downturn, according to Savio. As many as 60 IIM-C students have secured good jobs even before completing their courses.

The ultimate high for Ghosh, besides the joy of being his own boss, is to come back to IIM-C to recruit. “I want to come here and hire for MyMa some day.”

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