EDI, CII and Young Indians organize a Seminar on Enterprising Gujarat – Encouraging Entrepreneurship

In association with CII and Young Indians, EDI conducted a seminar on Enterprising Gujarat – Encouraging Entrepreneurship at its campus as a part of world entrepreneurship week. Students from EDI and various colleges/universities of Ahmedabad, like PDPU, IBS School of Business Management, Xcellon Institute, CEPT and IIPM. The Chief Guest for the function was Mr. Sanjay Gupta, Executive Chairman, Metro Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad Co. Ltd.  Also present on the occasion were Mr. Piyush Shah, Chairman-CII, Shri Yatindra Sharma, Past Chairman – CII, Mr. Dev Mukherjee, Director CII, and Dr. Dinesh Awasthi, Director –EDI. The function began with the welcome address of Dr. Awasthi.

The Chief Guest, Mr. Sanjay Gupta in his keynote address, expressed happiness that “entrepreneurship’ was now taught as a subject, giving youth the advantage of starting early rather than making them wait for several years to take experience before venturing. He urged the students not to be afraid of failures as he believed failures taught lessons which success never did. Shri Gupta termed ‘right business ideas’ and the ‘skills to pursue them’ as the essence of entrepreneurship. Giving  prominence to ‘optimization’ over ‘innovation’, Shri Gupta said that in the Metro Link Express Project, they had achieved optimization in operational planning, understanding customer expectations, and thus achieved landmarks like reduction in cost by 35 % and increase in speed. Emphasizing on the significance of research he said that for this project too, they had researched technologies across the world and then brought them all together.

Mr. Piyush Shah, Chairman-CII Gujarat State Council in his theme address hoped that this celebration of entrepreneurship would motivate many young people to step forward and be a part of this happening world of entrepreneurship. He stated that India was fortunate to be a young country and, very soon it would have a highly conducive entrepreneurial climate.

Shri Yatindra Sharma, Past Chairman – CII Gujarat State Council emphasized on the fact that India needs to foster a stronger culture of entrepreneurship. Tracing his own success story he inspired all to be determined, have the right entrepreneurial spirit and move ahead with a passion to succeed.

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Dinesh Awasthi, Director –EDI, urged all students to dream big and achieve big as India, he said, was going through the most fruitful time with opportunities in plenty and pro-SME policies. Inspiring the youth to think big he asked them to trust ‘next practices’ instead of ‘best practices’ and change the game itself instead of changing just the rules, while pursuing entrepreneurship.

The inaugural session was followed by Panel Discussions on ‘Encouraging Start-ups- The Next generation Innovators: Role of Academics and Business Incubators,’ and ‘Enterprising Gujarat – Idea Generation & Emerging Opportunities’. The discussions explored entrepreneurship as the key driver of equitable economic growth with immense potential to generate employment opportunities. The discussions also answered questions like; What does it take to nurture entrepreneurship? , Can the conditions required to nurture entrepreneurship be created by careful design and in a planned manner? What is the relevance of entrepreneurship in India and Indian Industry? 

Vote for EDI Students in CLEAN & CLEAR Ahmedabad Times FreshFace 2012

Kalpak Gandhi

Kalpak Gandhi

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Gajal Jain

Gajal Jain

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Priyanka Shah

Priyanka Shah

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Yash Mehta

Yash Mehta

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Profile Of EDI 

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Pre-Visit to Vasad Ravines

The place for the Second Event of SEED

This event planed on 28^th October 2012 Sunday  is at Vasad around 90KM from EDI India. Activities to be done are 

1. Snake and reptile show
2. Adventure activities
3. A short trek along the river Mahi Sagar river

Purpose of the visit:

It is an effort to educate students with basic species of snakes and reptiles commonly found in Gujarat along with few demonstration of Snakes and also learn about their importance in our lives and environment. This event is led by Nature Club Vidhyanagar who work for Nature conservation specially rescue of Snakes. Adventure activities and trek planed would help explore a new place with different bio-diversity and also give a change from routine life. It is going to be a fun filled learning experience.

Registration Details :

Registration Details 

Photos of Pre-Visit of the Site:

SEED visited Aranya Wilderness Park

SEED - Students for Environment at EDI is a group of students at EDI who believe in having fun in lap of Mother Nature and learn some lessons of life through experience.

It conducted its first event “Aao kuch Toofani karte hai”  Its motive was to rejuvenate a child inside everyone. This event took shape under guidance of Shalabh mittal sir and with the support of Satya Acharya sir. It was conducted at Aranya Wilderness Park, near Indroda National Park, Gandhinagar. This event was led by Mr. Madhu Menon Director of Anala Outdoors and environmental activists.

Into The Woods

Team SEED

Butterfly Park

Participants along with Madhu Menon sir and his team reached the Park at 7:30 A.M. started their Nature Trail from the gate of the park. We came across Nilgais, the biggest antelope found in Asia and groups of peafowls, Males as well as Females. Males on display to attract females were also spotted during Nature Trail. After the Trail everyone had a talk with Madhu Menon sir about relation of humans with nature and how almost every invention, every technology is the product of some or other observation of elements of Nature. We learnt even after being so advance in all fields some or the other way we are closely related to Mother Nature.

Playing Games

Then came breakfast time followed by a walk to the lake where we had a “Playing Games” session, this was the time we all forgot we were PG students of such a reputed college EDI and played games like a child. Those innocent days of childhood were recalled. Near the lake we also spotted and identified few species of birds like Lapwing (Titodi), water-hen, egret (Baglo), Tailor bird, Cuckoo etc. Finally we got free time when we visited a Garden in the park known as “Butterfly valley” and clicked so many photographs. It was a small simple 5 hours event but these 5 hours were enough to de-stress ourselves from our busy schedule at college. In all it was a simple yet effective way of spending a weekend morning.  Looking forward for some more such different experiences.

SAGAR PATEL-- EDI Alumnus (2005-2006Batch) grabs POWER BRANDS RISING STARS 2012-2013 Awards for "PLANET HEALTH"

My Story session with Phaninder Sama

Cofounder of redBus.in - Phaninder Sama shares his story with EDI students in “MY STORY” session

Date: 25^th September, 2012                           Venue:Adhyayan-V , EDI Campus

Mr. Phaninder Sama, CEO and one of the of the cofounders of redbus.in shared his success story with the students today.

Mr. Sama started the session by sharing the story which led to the inception of redbus.in He said that during Diwali of 2005, he wanted to spend the festival in his home town, Hyderabad. Since he didn’t know his schedule till the end, taking a bus was the only option. He ran around town hunting for a ticket, but they were all sold out before he reached the travel agents. Then he realized some key issues with the then-existing model:

• Travel agents don’t have all the information regarding all the possible bus operators. This lead to a gap and customers had to take decisions based on limited information.
• Most of the agents were not able to sell return bus tickets.

          While telling his story he shared that it was not easy to convince the bus operators to buy his idea. So with proper guidance from mentors, they started to focus on the consumers who were facing a problem of the availability of information and ticketing. And with the bus operators he worked on the quota concept to book tickets. Slowly and gradually they were able to ask for 50% of the available seats as quota. That is when they bus operators took the concept seriously.

He also talked about how one after the other they expanded into various cities and also explained his model works. He said that he used a very conservative approach and never advertised for his business.

When he talked about the name of the company and brand name , he said that they had a very simple approach of choosing a name which could build a network. As he is studied in BITS -Pilani , so the company was named Pilani Soft Labs. As for the brand name, he said that they wanted something which is easy to remember, can be easily identified, and can be easily typed in the address bar of the browser.

While ending his session, he said that the only thing that he is teaching himself now is to learn to be less passionate about his work, because if you are thinking about your business 24x7 you are bound to get new ideas, which confuses your team. So currently he is focusing on managing what he has achieved so far and is following the course as it comes to him.

Why Brands for Start Ups?

Mr. Sanjay Chakraborty conducted a seminar on “Why Brands?” for PGDM-BE students at EDI campus. Mr. Chakraborty is the Associate Vice President of Triton Communications.

Sanjay started by saying that- Advertising is nothing but communication. It is a communication for a product, service, person or place which inspires its target audience to consider it while making a purchase. Advertising is not just an art, but it is a blend of both art and science. The main object of any advertiser is to make the consumer consider the brand.

According to Sanjay—Brand is nothing but a relationship of trust with the customer. In order to make a brand, it is necessary to have a vision. From the very initial state it is necessary to have a differentiating factor which builds the brand image. The tangibles as well as intangibles associated with any product plays a significant role in creating a brand.

He said that usually start ups don’t have big budgets for advertising and building a brand image so he recommended to build a  bond with the customers over the years.

Also there are a lot of myths associated with brand building and the startups should be very clear about what image they want to convey, and whom they want to convey it. Both “Masses” and “Classes” are equally important however the way of presenting and communicating your brand to them is very different.

He gave various examples from the industry to substantiate all his teachings and the students were really delighted with the seminar and the way in which it was conducted.