Day three at Neev-2016 : Entrepreneurship and Design Thinking Take Centrestage

[caption id="attachment_5518" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Mr Ravi Gururaj with Dr Githa Heggde, Dr Anil Rao and Prof Prakash Unakal"][/caption] An interesting session cruising through the elemental concerns of entrepreneurship and startups and the captain being nobody else other than Mr. Ravi Gururaj, CEO, QIKPOD.com himself. Sharing interesting insights into startups, so much in sync with demands of the times, Gururaj was all smiles as he charmed his way into the hearts of the young professionals sitting before him, in audience. As his career took off, it gave him a lot of opportunities to meet people with diverse talent and perspective and unique thought processes and thus offering him immense learnings. Gururaj told the young audience that they were living in super exciting times.Sharing glimpses of his journey as an entrepreneur and the influence it had, he brought out the importance of mentors in shaping the success of entrepreneurs. He advised the students that ‘mentors’ are important to succeed in life and one should have knack to identify the right mentor at an early stage of one’s career. He advised students to learn to enhance and accumulate knowledge about new perspectives by spending more time with the mentors. [caption id="attachment_5519" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Mr Ravi Gururaj "][/caption] Luck, going by his words was another undeniably significant player in scripting success as an entrepreneur. It definitely plays a pivotal role in the success of any venture.Customer acquisition remains another battle to be won and there is no escape from the same. Here, he had a gem of advice to offer to the businessmen in making seated before him. It was to leverage ones' business connection and associations of other established businesses to build and expand one’s business. Also he highlighted the importance of prescience in entrepreneurs mental makeup. They should have the foresight to predict the sales cycle, customer behaviour and the behavioural pattern of their customers. Sharing an interesting anecdote in context of talent acquisition, which is growing challenge for businesses, he told how he worked through the challenge for his venture Ivebeengood.com, set up in USA in the year 1999. He had embarked on a new hiring strategy. The field of e-commerce was in nascent stage in the USA during those days. Instead of hiring experienced professionals from retail industry, he decided to hire young and inexperienced individuals who were passionate and innovative and ready to learn new things.Talking in the same tenor he said it has become imperative for organizations to protect the talent, keep them engaged and nurture them. [caption id="attachment_5520" align="alignleft" width="300" caption=" Leaders of tomorrow"][/caption] According to him, ‘Poaching of Right Talent’ is a big threat to any organization. Citing examples from his experience as an entrepreneur, he advised the students to have two fold business strategies when deciding about future opportunities.This is important because the business environment and its dynamics are beyond one’s control and unpredictable. While speaking about QIKPOd.com, his latest venture wherein he is building innovative last mile logistics solutions for the e-commerce industry. Gururaj, said India has a huge potential for e-commerce. Due to increased usage of mobile and innovation, the growth prospects for e-commerce are huge. Already, the e-commerce companies in India are using automation ‘Robots’ – for efficiency and convenience. Referring to the dynamicity of the VUCA world, he said he anticipated shorter job tenures and bigger security concerns in the days to come.Bringing out the importance of technology in the current times, Gururaj mentioned of innovations in technology such as ‘Google Translate’ app and how transformational these have been. He said the future belongs to ‘Internet of Things’ and business models that are ‘Innovative'.According to him, in future with rise of technology – he foresaw the usage of ‘Adhar Card’ in India as a metric to assess one’s reputation based on ratings cited. The ‘Adhar card’ will become one’s resume in near future for accessing all our requirements including credit from bank or from a retail store. Talking of innovation and automation in car industry he cited the examples of innovation at Tesla Motors Ltd, which he found very impressive and fascinating. [caption id="attachment_5521" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Prof Mohan Chandra"][/caption] The session was followed by Q&A and the audience expressed their deep gratitude with standing ovation to Mr. Ravi Gururaj, for sharing his futuristic insights. A usual day in the foundation fortnight progresses through sessions named - Spot light, In-frame, Prelude and Roll Action. Spot light and In-frame are features where in established experts from diverse domains address and interact with the students. Prelude and Roll Actions are sessions where in faculty addresses the students or it has panel discussions on some chosen theme. Roll action is assigned for group-activities.The theme for the Inframe was Entreprenurship and the session was led by Prof Aparna Krishnamoorthy.The day's episode of Prelude witnessed a session on Design Thinking by professors Prakash Unakal and Mohan Chandra.