yazdi

Entrepreneurs are the future of India: John Mullins

13/03/2014 yazdi

John Mullins, Associate Professor of Management Practice in Entrepreneurship and Marketing at London Business School (LBS), was in Mumbai recently with a team of MBA students to study entrepreneur practices in emerging markets. In a conversation with BT’s Ajita Shashidhar, Mullins talks about Indian entrepreneurial stories that he finds truly impressive. Excerpts:

Q. What made you choose India of all the emerging markets?

A. There is much to learn from India. Twenty years from now, all the growth will not come from Europe and North America. It will come from emerging markets such as India. Therefore, it is a critical market to understand.

Q.Are there any Indian entrepreneur-driven enterprises that you particularly admire?

A. My students are currently touring rural India with the sales team of Dharma Life. I find their model impressive. The company caters to the basic needs of rural people by creating a distribution network for products such as cycles and stoves at affordable prices. By doing so, Dharma Life has also enabled several rural people to earn a decent livelihood by selling these products.

Click Here for the full interview

Management

5 Scientifically Proven Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder

06/03/2014 yazdi

Here are five ways anyone can work smarter from Belle Beth Cooper, content crafter atBuffer, the social media management tool that lets you schedule, automate, and analyze social-media updates. (She’s also co-founder of Exist.)

Here’s Beth:

Working harder can be an easy habit to slip into, though. Sometimes it’s hard to switch off at the end of the day or take time out on the weekend and stop thinking about work. With a startup of my own to run, I find this even harder to manage. Whenever I’m not working on Buffer I’m working on Exist, and it’s easy to fall into a pattern of “always working” rather than working smart.

Here are five ways to avoid that trap:

Click Here to read more

Calendar, Finance

SIX special loan options for Women Entrepreneurs

27/02/201427/02/2014 yazdi

8^th March, International Women’s Day

In partnership with Moneylife Foundation, Bhartiya Mahila Bank (BMB), the new
government bank and India’s first Women’s Bank,
offers a one-time opportunity for quick processing of these loans on 8^th March

If eligible, you may even get your sanction letter on 8^th March at the hands of
CMD Mrs Usha Ananthasubramanian

Special Loan Products:

SME Easy loan: For traders, services and manufacturers – 100 bps concession for women entrepreneurs
Kitchen Modernisation Loan: For renovation of kitchen & purchase of electronic and electrical appliances – longer repayment period of 7 years
Beauty Parlour loan: Term loan for purchase/construction – attractive rate of interest and low processing charges
Catering Service Loan: Term loan for purchase of utensils, gas connection, stove, tiffin boxes, etc – low processing fees
Child Day Care Centre/ Creche Loan: Term loan for purchase of cutlery, gas connection, refrigerator, furniture, office equipment, etc – easy repayment in 5 years
SHG Loan: Both term-loan and working capital – no processing fees with insurance facility available

Eligibility for loans from Rs5 lakh-Rs25 lakh:

A) An established and profit-making business with experience of 2 to 3 years.
B) New entrepreneur skilled in any activity, desirous of implementing a new profitable project with established market demand.
C) Income-Tax returns for the last two/three years.

For forms, brochures and information, contact:

Bharatiya Mahila Bank Ltd, Ground floor, Air India Building, Nariman Point, Mumbai, 400021.
Email: br.mumbai@bmb.co.in | Tel: 22022603 / 04
Moneylife Foundation, 315, Hind Services Industrial Estate, Shivaji Park, Dadar, Mumbai 400028.
Email: foundation@moneylife.in | Tel: 49205000
(Moneylife Foundation is an NGO, which is only facilitating distribution of forms/information)

Courtesy : Firdos Shroff

Business Ideas, Business Plans, Calendar, Motivations, Networking

The Economic Times Young Leaders

20/02/2014 yazdi

The Economic Times Young Leaders is the largest and definitive platform for the most promising young Indian corporate managers. It was born in 2011, in partnership with SHL (now CEB India), the authority on leadership-tests. The program has since become the national benchmark for talented youngsters, offering them an unfair advantage in the climb to leadership. Previous winners have received national recognition, and more importantly, glorious tributes from their supervisors and CEOs.

WHY PARTICIPATE?

To self-discover your own leadership strengths basis industry-endorsed standards
To feature in the coveted The Economic Times Young Leaders ranking, thus gaining recognition as one of India’s top talents
To meet and learn from India’s blue-chip CEOs
To network with the country’s best young managerial talent

Read testimonials of finalists of previous editions of The Economic Times Young Leaders.

So if you are between 26-32 years and yearning for your place in the corporate spotlight, here’s your moment.

To know more about participation and related details, read the FAQs

Click Here for more information

Business Ideas, Startups

Launchpad Challenge 2014

11/02/201411/02/2014 yazdi

Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Ahmedabad, and the National Entrepreneurship Network are delighted to invite you to take part in Launchpad Challenge 2014 – an initiative that celebrates and supports breakthrough innovations from students across all disciplines!

If you are a graduate or post-graduate student in India with an exciting idea/product/prototype to share, enter the Challenge to win national recognition and fast-track commercialization support, including:

An opportunity to attend an intensive business plan workshop tailored for you
An opportunity to pitch your idea/product to leading investors
Recognition at the Launchpad Challenge Grand Finale at EDII, Ahmedabad (to be held on 7th March, 2014)

To enter the Challenge, please submit your completed nomination form (available at link below), on or before 15th February, 2014.

APPLY to Launchpad Challenge 2014

Click Here for more information re: eligibility, etc.

Finance, Startups

5 Bootstrapping Tips to Cut Costs at your Startup

11/02/2014 yazdi

Bootstrapping refers to the process of starting a business without external capital. It provides you with greater control in the initial days of a venture. However, since you are not sourcing capital from an investor you need to be extremely cautious with your cash. In this video Prof. Radhika Meenakshi Shankar, Founder, Wise Owl Consulting, and a Start-up Mentor shares “5 Bootstrapping Tips to Cut Costs at your Start-up.”

People / Stories

Do you like reading success stories ?

08/02/2014 yazdi

Do you read business blogs where the author has failed three times without success?

No, because you want to learn from success, not hear about “lessons learned” from a guy who hasn’t yet learned those lessons himself.

However, the fact that you are learning only from success is a deeper problem than you imagine.

Some stories will expose the enormity of this fallacy.

Bullet holes: A brain teaser
During World War II the English sent daily bombing raids into Germany. Many planes never returned; those that did were often riddled with bullet holes from anti-air machine guns and German fighters.

Wanting to improve the odds of getting a crew home alive, English engineers studied the locations of the bullet holes. Where the planes were hit most, they reasoned, is where they should attach heavy armor plating. Sure enough, a pattern emerged: Bullets clustered on the wings, tail, and rear gunner’s station. Few bullets were found in the main cockpit or fuel tanks.

The logical conclusion is that they should add armor plating to the spots that get hit most often by bullets. But that’s wrong.

Planes with bullets in the cockpit or fuel tanks didn’t make it home; the bullet holes in returning planes were “found” in places that were by definition relatively benign. The real data is in the planes that were shot down, not the ones that survived.

Click Here for more of this interesting way of thinking 🙂

Education, News, Startups

India’s new start-up hub, Powai Valley

02/02/2014 yazdi

Thanks to the combination of an engineering school that is as brutally difficult to get into as any in the world, Mumbai’s famed spirit of ‘dhanda’, and relatively low rentals, a new breed of risk-taking, entrepreneurial talent is turning Powai – which once lay sleepily around a picturesque lake – into India’s new hotspot for start-ups. It already houses more than 50 start-ups, and there are many others lining up to enter. (In a nod to its emergence as a business hotspot, a bunch of new upmarket pubs and restaurants have sprung up.)

While some of these ventures are bootstrapping, others are flush with funds but together they fuel an ecosystem which, venture capitalists say could, possibly be India’s answer to Silicon Valley and London’s Silicon Roundabout.
What is brewing in Powai Valley, a moniker given by VCs, is unlike Bangalore and the NCR, largely because most of the start-ups in Powai are in the consumer space whether it’s internet or mobile. Also, the Mumbai suburb is supported by talent coming from IIT-B, giving it an edge over other cities, in the long run.

Click Here for the details of how IIT-B is setting up an entrepreneurship center

INDIA’S BIGGEST EVER INNOVATION CHALLENGE

WHY PARTICIPATE?