New Venture Creation - Entrepreneur Day

I have previously blogged about the New Venture Creation program at BITS Pilani. This last Sunday we hosted its first ever Entrepreneur Day. Students at Pilani are hidden away in a remote place and don't get to meet entrepreneurs that often. And even if they do, it is not with the purpose of being coached for their startups.

This E-Day was an event setup to get students face to face with Entrepreneurs, hear a couple of startup stories, practice pitching and then get 1-1 coaching for their startups.

Vish Bajaj, Founder and CEO of ValueFirst, gave a highly motivating and humorous talk about his personal entrepreneurial journey. Ajay Chaturvedi, Founder and CEO of HarVa, talked about his rural BPO and more importantly emphasized his startup's focus is on value creation and not empowerment or social upliftment. Gagan, Founder of ValueFirst, and Sujit Panigrahi, Founder of Convergent, also shared their experiences.

But the most exciting part of the day were the student pitches followed by coaching sessions for each team. The pitches were well rehearsed and most of them were quite clear about their business idea. Of course they need to tighten the business case and the launch plan which is the next phase for them. I am bullish that at least 3 teams out of these 9 will form a startup straight after graduation. Let's see!

For rest of the pictures go to the E-Day album.