E Week 2012

Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education is a unique B-school in the sense that it has “Entrepreneurship” in its name. SIMSREE has always believed in encouraging and nurturing entrepreneurial spirits of the students. We have a dedicated student body called the “E-Cell”, which aims to promote entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship in students. The recently concluded annual flagship event of the E-Cell “E-Week” was a great success.

 The inaugural ceremony of the E-Week was graced by the presence of Mr. Kunal Shah, founder of Freecharge.in. Mr. Shah addressed the audience and spoke about his journey as an entrepreneur. He explained that it requires a lot of efforts and dedication to become a successful entrepreneur, but the journey is nevertheless rewarding. He also insisted that it is necessary to discard the fear of failure out of one’s mind in order to become successful. He advised the young students on what to expect and what not to expect during their entrepreneurial ventures. Mr. Shah’s address was both enlightening and motivating for the budding entrepreneurs.

The inaugural ceremony was followed by the event called “Idea Generation”, where the participating teams had to spontaneously generate business ideas based on a theme that was decided by the judges. The judges for this event included Mr. Ninad Deshmukh, owner, Uniheal Foods, who is also an alumnus of SIMSREE and Mr. Dhirwani, who is an entrepreneur in the field of exports, textiles, finance and hospitality. Due to the enthusiastic participation of the students and the able guidance provided by the judges, the Event Generation competition turned out to become a success.

The B-Plan competition was scheduled for Day 2 of the E-Week. The shortlisted teams had to present their B-Plans in front of the judges and each plan was examined by the judges in terms of its feasibility. The B-plans were in various different sectors ranging from Health, Education and Power to Mobile solutions and Pearl Farming. For the initial round, Executive Summaries were called. Out of them, 22 teams were selected for the second round wherein their B-plans were shortlisted and final 8 teams were invited on campus to present their B-plans in front of judges. ‘Team Gladiators’ from SIMSREE, Mumbai and ‘Team Sunshine’ from KJSIMR, Mumbai won the first and second prizes, respectively.

The esteemed judges for this event included Shweta Aggarwal- Regional Manager, India Angel Network, Parag Sheth - Co- Founder Pacecon Technosys, Amit Kulkarni- Co-Founder Pacecon Technosys, Rohan Deshpande- CIO Oglivy India Ltd. Apart from evaluating the B-Plans presented by the teams, the judges also provided some valuable advice to the students.

Business Badshah was the grand event planned for the 3^rd and final day of the E-Week. The ability of the teams to make money out of an idea within a specific time period was put to test in this competition. The judge for this competition was Mr. Jai Mamtani, Co-founder, Volanse. The participating teams were given Rs. 100 and told to maximize the investment. The teams performed various activities on streets of Mumbai like selling candies, selling chana, guiding the tourists, performing street dance, selling chocolate gift-cards specially made for Valentine’s Day, etc. And the returns generated ranged from 500% to whopping 7000%. Three winners were chosen based on criteria like innovation, RoI, concept, etc. The enthusiasm of the participating teams and the valuable inputs provided by Mr. Mamtani, made this competition a grand success. It was a fitting culmination for the E-Week. All the hard work put in by the students for making the E-Week a successful event paid off as the event turned out to be a bigger success than was anticipated. It also set the students thinking about entrepreneurship as an attractive career option.