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Ms Meenakshi Ramkumar and Master Shahwant Srikanth are only in their standard 9 and 10 respectively. But, they are aspiring to be entrepreneurs than aim for the IITs or IIMs.
They were among the 46 students from class 9-12 who were trained in the skills of entrepreneurship and taught to be job creators than job seekers.
This is a project the Chennai chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE Chennai) has taken up to groom young children to turn into entrepreneurs.
Theme
The workshop covered two sides of the entrepreneurial/innovation process. The hard side was of converting an idea into reality involving business plans, raising funds, staffing, implementing the project and growing it. The soft side involved passion with which a project is to be implemented; the emotions involved at various stages of the project and loneliness that an entrepreneur experiences.
The participants were divided into six groups and each group had to choose a company idea, based on which they would form a company. They were taken through the process of forming and developing their company from value proposition of the idea, defining customers, marketing tactics, costing analysis to profit share.
Young companies
The young entrepreneurs transformed the ideas into companies like Fun & Frolic - an Event Management Company; Rock & Remake – a second-hand business; Sprint – student services; Extra mile- a travel agency; Paw Print – pet care services and a medical tourism company. Each team presented its plans to reputed entrepreneurs who judged the same. The winning team of the business plans contest was the medical tourism company and the runners up was pet care services.
Experience speaks
Entrepreneurs like Mr. Arun Athiappan , Founder, >www.ticketgoose.com ; Ms Sridevi Raghavan, co-founder and CEO, Amelio Child Care Pvt. Ltd; Mr Rakesh Raghunathan, Petawrap and Mr Ankit Chhajer, Co-founder, 3G Simplified, shared their experiences with the future entrepreneurs. They dwelt in length on a range of topics, including idea generation processes, implementation, creating value, team work, funding, growing the company and customer relationships.
Ms Meenakshi, a student of Abacus Montessori School, feels a business mind is no less competent than an IIT graduate. Her comments came after attending a workshop of entrepreneurship.
Master Shashwant, studying at the P.S. Higher Secondary School, said that he learnt on the importance of 4 Cs – to communicate, connect, contextualise and create content. “Failing is not the same as failure. It is only a closer step to achievement.”
TiE Chennai President, Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, who is also Vice-Chairman of Cognizant Technology Solutions, told parents at the workshop, “do not stifle the creativity of your children. Let them do as much as they can. All we should do is provide them with the right platform, identify their passion and encourage them.”
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