Media Release

Mangaluru, Feb 10: The MBA department of AIMIT (St Aloysius Institute of Management and Information Technology), St Aloysius College (Autonomous) in association with Kanara Global Entrepreneurs organized a one-day entrepreneurship development programme on February 9 for second year MBA students.

Vathika Pai, president of Kanara Chamber of Commerce & Industry was the esteemed chief guest for the Inaugural of EDP-2018. Her insights on overcoming hurdles faced by potential entrepreneurs with practical ideas served as a good start for a productive day. The main focus was on how to be successful entrepreneurs, establish their own rules and succeed even if they fall a couple of times in this life long journey. She spoke about the ‘Centre for Entrepreneurship and Learning’ and it’s pros for a budding entrepreneur.

Fr Denzil Lobo, director, AIMIT delivered the presidential address emphasizing on the passion for carrying out a business. He portrayed the journey of a passion which turns into an obsession and an idea becoming a reality. He put forth an example of a bunch of entrepreneurial personalities who strove towards becoming successful and concluded with Elon Musk’s famous quote, ‘Work super hard’.

The certificates of the online course on entrepreneurship from Santa Clara University, California were handed over to student coordinators Rahul Udyawar, Prajwal Sequeira, Hasna and Aisiri by Vathika Pai. As many as 227 students completed the MOOC course.

Rahul Udyawar, student coordinator, welcomed the gathering while Hasna Veeran, student coordinator proposed the vote of thanks. Dr Rowena Wright, dean, Academics, Swapna Rose, faculty coordinator were also present. Aisiri and Prajwal anchored the inaugural.

There were four sessions conducted and the first session was addressed by Annappa Pai, who is the director of ACE Foods Pvt Ltd. He focused on his journey as an entrepreneur. His business of manufacturing started due to the non-availability of tasty potato chips in the city as compared to Mumbai. The idea of becoming an entrepreneur gained momentum while travelling to explore various possibilities to start a new business. He stressed on the importance of analyzing before acting. His suggestions to young entrepreneurs were to focus on the product, quality and customer rather than the money. He also said it would be useful to learn new languages to communicate to the suppliers, dealers, service providers and customers. Success does not happen overnight is what he concluded his session with.

The second speaker for the day was CA Chandrakanth Rao who spoke on the formalities of starting a new business with utmost emphasis laid on financial management and allocation of monetary resources. He spoke on the importance of never giving up when one decides to start a new business. He spoke on the relevance of a good business plan/framework prior to starting a business. Speaking about the financial aspect of business, he explained about the sources of funds, forms of funds which vary from business to business and also the mobilization of funds. He guided the budding entrepreneurs on what they need to focus on when it comes to the financial planning of a business. He threw some light on how the funds would appear in the profit and loss statement, how to present the project report while seeking funds from a bank. He also shared important information on the legal aspects and compliance factors while starting a business.

The third session in the afternoon was addressed by K Nikesh Shetty, an advocate. He gave a list of steps to be followed before starting a business. He spoke about the importance of the certificate of incorporation and the legal consequences that an entrepreneur will have to face if he/she fails to abide to the legal rules and regulations. He also gave a set of legal Acts related to labour legislation and concluded with a brief note on Intellectual Property Rights.

The last session was taken over by Rajendra Desai, an in-house resource person who spoke about the relevance of marketing in connection with a budding entrepreneur. He spoke about his experience as an entrepreneur in the past and the challenges and pros of self-employment. His main focus was on doing things in a better way. With good marketing, sales become irrelevant, and this was best explained by Desai taking the example of iPhone.

Student entrepreneurs from amongst the Aloysians Prajwal Sequeira, Calwin D’Cunha, Sada Muneeb and Hameed Nadeem shared their entrepreneurial journey, as a web-designer, an event manager, a tissue manufacturer and an interior designer respectively.

On the whole, the workshop paved a path to be more informative, interactive and gave students full-fledged insights to become successful entrepreneurs.