The prestigious event Sprout’IT 22, organized by the Information Technology Entrepreneurship & Leadership Forum (iTELF) of SCIT, took place on 17 September 2022. This notable event started with an introductory video about the event. Then hosts of the event invited the honorable Director Dr. Dhanya Pramod and Deputy Director Dr. Kanchan Patil to lighten the inaugural lamp to spread the positive brightness of knowledge one is seeking to get from this event. Then the Director and Deputy Director welcomed the chief guests and panel speakers, Mr. Yogesh Shinde (Founder, Bamboo India), Amal PS (Founder KEITO), Nakul Rajpurohit (Co-Founder, Urban Nomads), and moderator of the event Vineet Chandra (SCIT Alumnus & Senior Consultant IBM) with a welcome speech and by handing them a token of appreciation.
The panel discussion began with the question of starting the journey of being an entrepreneur and how an idea can lead to a successful business.
Mr. Yogesh Shinde: Before this, he worked for a firm in Germany as a software developer, and then he returned to India after a long time. There is always a vision behind doing something, and Mr. Shinde always wanted to contribute to sustainability and his nation. So, this idea stuck in his mind, and he started with this idea of making bamboo products to give a replacement for plastic products. He began with the motive of making Bamboo from poor man’s timber to rich man’s timber. He also pitched this idea of bamboo products in Shark Tank India, got much appreciation from there, and grabbed a deal from there.
Mr. Amal PS: Commitment is necessary for getting things done, and one has to be at the right place and time. As growth in IT services began in 2012, he started doing experiments in the field but haven’t had much knowledge about the field, so it is important to understand your customer and market. To be an entrepreneur, one needs to have an idea and a way to implement that idea. Firstly, he tried many experiments and finally landed on the idea of setting up KEITO Tech. Private Limited in 2016, which provides services of no coding data automation and scrapping services. Amal also got offers to shift his business to the U.S, but he rejected this offer because he wanted to contribute to his nation.
Mr. Nakul Rajpurohit: His main motive after starting this start-up was to make a place for likeminded people who want to explore their life in different ways, and Nomads in their brand name also tells us about the people with a passion for moving from here to there, and he also said that they are heading towards making a community of like-minded people and Urban Nomads is also a good place for remote working professionals who also wants to follow their passion of traveling along with work.
Moving further, a lot of discussions happened on marketing strategies, capital generation, branding, and future visions of their respective start-ups. Some of the critical points of discussion were about choosing the right partner while starting a business, having emotional and financial support from family and friends as much as possible, and targeting the innovation one can bring to their customer base.
Q & A asked by Reflectionist Anzar Malik to Panel Speakers: How to tackle this situation if I have an idea of what to do? But I don’t know how to make it happen?
Answered By Mr. Amal PS: Join a start-up aligned with what you want to do and let them know in advance that you’re planning to start your own business and that you are there for learning only because integrity is important in the workplace.
With this Q & A panel discussion ended and Dr. Kanchan Patil gave a word of thanks to all the panel speakers and congratulated the whole iTELF team and mentors of iTELF Professor Apoorva Kulkarni and Professor Raghav Sandhane for their relentless efforts to make this event successful.
After this following sub-events were also conducted:
- Pro-Seed: Participants in this event were given a chance to pitch their products and specify their needs in the market and ways of scaling them in the market to succeed.
- Bullet-in-Board: In this event, participants were given case studies, and they had to design marketing, convincing, and selling strategies for the offered products in a case study.
- Product 360: In this event, participants were handed over some products and had to think of alternative use of that product other than regular ones.
- Criti-Call: It was a case study competition, participants were given a case and they had to analyze the case and come up with loopholes with solutions to them.
- SocialLit: In this, a refreshing music night was organised in collaboration with Konnect, the musical committee of SCIT.
In the events conducted, participants from eminent colleges and B-schools from all over India participated with high enthusiasm and gave their best.
