ENspace Online

First meeting of The Entrepreneurship Garage

by Editor on 16/10/09 at 5:23 am

Garage Forum 1 , 3rd September
 
Introduction: 

Twishmay Shankar, Web Manager, The Entrepreneurship Cell
 
- E Garage is a joint initiative by E Cell, SOM and SINE
 - E Garage to be carried out through two platforms: meetings (fortnightly) and the online activities: Google group and the blog.
- Goals of E Garage: to offer mentoring, networking opportunities to members. Also guidance in entrepreneurship related matters and benefit of peer-to-peer learning.
 
Prof. Karuna Jain (HOD, SOM)
 - Objective of E Garage is to bring all the stake holders of IIT Bombay on one common platform
- This initiative shall combine the knowledge of engineering students, SOM students and E Cell members for everyone’s benefit
- SINE can help in taking technological ideas of B Tech students to commercialization
- Because of the various backgrounds to which the members belong, E Garage would be a place where Passion, Ideas and Business Perspectives are brought together
 
Poyni Bhatt (CAO, SINE) 
- Engineers think too much of just technology, they do not stop to consider whether the technology can be used to solve a real life problem, someone needs to give them that perspective, management students etc can help in that
 
Prof Amarnath (Prof incharge of SINE) 
 - When one starts a business, it is a journey into the unknown. In such a scenario, one must have faith in oneself and extremely good theoretical knowledge of one’s domain.
- Our country needs hi-tech businesses, need for product based startups
- For starting up, look for the right kind of talent, get together, form a team

Prof Anand Khusre ( Prof at SOM)
 - Entrepreneurs pursue opportunities and with the help of resources they convert the opportunity into a successful business venture
- PROFIT  is the result of the following ingredients coming together:
 Physical resources
Reputation 
Organization
Finance
Intellectual Property 
Technology

Arpit Agrawal, moderator for the discussion (Member, Headstart)  headed the discussion , the major points for discussion were
 - Common problems facing institute startups: lack of awareness, absence of a good team, lack of inspiration and focus.
- People in IIT are not enterprising. They lack the attitude to build a business, they are trained to work for others. People look for job security, they do not have that risk taking ability.
- What people fail to see is that even a failed entrepreneur will be better employed in future i.e. an attempt at starting up teaches one a lot
 
Expectations from E garage which came out in discussion:
 a) People will get to present their ideas in front of like minded others and get feedback/suggestions
b) People would be able to find a team for their start up through these meet ups
c) It will be a platform where we can pitch our ideas to experts in that particular domain
d) Peer to peer learning
e) Idea validation
f) WE could bring BTP, DDP projects and discuss their commercial potential. If found worthy, startups could be built around that product etc
g) Opportunity identification could take place through discussions of needs in various sectors.