IIM Bangalore's global entrepreneurship summit- Eximius 2014 kicked-off on Friday with a stimulating address by Member of Parliament, and former UN Under-Secretary General Shashi Tharoor.

He talked about his life experiences and how at so many junctures he took the less trodden paths. He talked about how he decided to study Humanities despite being a Science topper and how after having aced the entrance for top IIMs, he went on to purse his higher studies in international affairs.

He also answered a multitude of questions from the audience on Indian Politics, road blocks in India’s development and entrepreneurial ecosystem in India. In his words, “Ours is not a country where people seek entrepreneurship. Government jobs are the most sought after as they are perceived to be the safest. But risk is just a trade-off.”

The first day of the entrepreneurship summit started with keynote address by Piyush Pandey, the Executive Chairman and Creative Director for Ogilvy & Mather India and South Asia. Pandey treated the packed audience to a journey down his most memorable ad campaigns which included Cadbury’s 'Kuch Khas Hai', Vodafone’s Zoozoos, Fevicol, Fevikwik, Centre shock, Mentos, and the latest Google campaign.

Padmabhushan Mallika Sarabhai who delivered a talk and performed on the second day showed a series of videos of her work where she used Art to transplant simple but neglected lessons into her audience’s mind. She spoke about the simple ways of impacting people’s lives like tutoring the children of domestic help. This was followed by a performance by her.

Reach- The social entrepreneurship case study event, gave opportunity to the budding social entrepreneur to deal with this problem by using coherent business model.

Disrupt it gave an opportunity to all the innovative and passionate entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas before the industry experts, Venture Capitalists and incubators including Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, NASSCOM; Rajinish (Microsoft venture); K. Sunil Rao (Google); Lalith Ahuja (Kyron) and Sanjay (BOK Ventures).

A panel discussion on innovation and job opportunities in social entrepreneurship was also organised during the summit. The panel consisted of social entrepreneurs including Wilma Rodriguez, Nalini Shekar, and Shankar Jagannathan; a trained astronomer, Ashwin Mahesh and an urban planner, Vishwanath Shrikantaiah.

Eximius also organised a 2-day unique speaker series - Failathon where four entrepreneurs who talked about how they took the path less trodden.

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