Enterprisers.in

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

Finance

Loans for members of minority communities

24/01/2014 yazdi

The newly founded Kerala State Minorities Development Finance Corporation (KSMDFC), as part of its first phase of operations, is offering loans to qualified individuals who belong to Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, and Jain communities.

KSMDFC chairman Cherkalam Abdullah told reporters here on Thursday that the loans were being offered under various projects of the corporation such as self-employment entrepreneurship loan, expatriates loan, mirco-finance, and Mahila Samruddhi Yojana to individuals in the age group of 18 to 55.

The self-employment entrepreneurship loan is up to Rs.10 lakh at an interest rate of 2 to 6 per cent and beneficiaries get 60 to 72 months to repay it. The corporation offers loans for small-scale enterprises, technical enterprises, and for units dealing with handicrafts, agriculture, and transport.

Click Here for more details

People / Stories, Startups

How to be a successful freelancer

24/01/2014 yazdi

Freelancing opportunities are growing rapidly across industries. Find out how to make the most of this trend.

You can grab freelancing assignments not only in your city or in India but literally in any corner of the world. According to one estimate, every third user of Freelancer.com is from India.

The US-based website helps freelancers get assignments and takes a cut when the deal is done . It’s a trend that is slowly catching on. A growing number of professionals is junking regular employment to try their hands at freelancing. They are driven by the dream to be independent and work on their o ..

Freelancers don’t have the luxury of a big brand name to back them. It is their work that speaks for them. So, the first step is to build a portfolio of work samples and testimonials from satisfied clients.

Click Here for the full story from Wealth.economictimes.com

Calendar, Motivations, News

Most Prestigious SME Awards

24/01/2014 yazdi

Dear Entrepreneur,

YES BANK and Business Today have been recognizing the excellence of SMEs on a national platform since the last four years. This initiative has received an overwhelming response and exceptional participation of more than 4 lakh applications last year and 15 proud winners. We are proud to present the 5^th edition of this prestigious awards for 2013.

The survey will be carried out for the following awards, both under the Small sized (enterprises with turnover upto Rs.50 crores) and Medium sized (enterprises with turnover from Rs. 50 crores to 200 crores) categories and selected SMEs with exceptional performance will be felicitated with awards across categories for the Best CEO, Best SME, Social responsibility, Innovation etc.

We are pleased to invite your nomination for the 5^th BT YES BANK SME Survey and Awards 2014.

The Application deadline is 10^th Feb, 2014.

The award winners will be determined through a robust three-step selection process, on the basis of the application form and publicly available sources. The winners will be decided by an independent jury and will be felicitated at a Special Award Ceremony.

We look forward to your valuable response. Thank you.

Sincerely,

ASHISH BAGGA
Chief Executive Officer
INDIA TODAY GROUP

RANA KAPOOR
Founder, Managing Director & CEO
YES BANK

**For further information please contact:**
Mr. Devendra Maydeo	Mr. Nitin Das	Mr. Dharmarajan M
devendra.maydeo@yesbank.in	nitin.das@yesbank.in	dharmarajan.m@yesbank.in
+91 22 6669 9245	+91 11 6656 9034	+91 22 3347 9841

Finance

Loans upto Rs. 1 Crore to Women Entrepreneurs without collateral

22/01/201425/07/2017 yazdi

To promote women entrepreneurship, the country’s first Women’s Bank — the Bharatiya Mahila Bank(BMB) — has chosen to do away with collateral for loans availed by the fairer sex.

The BMB will provide collateral-free loans for amounts up to Rs 1 crore, which will instead be covered under the Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises (CGTMSE).

For loans availed for smaller amounts such as Rs 20,000, the bank will completely waive off the requirement for collateral.

“Women are moderate risk takers. So the question of collateral should not really arise,” said Usha Ananthasubramanian, CMD, BMB. The issue of collateral also tends to discourage women from availing loans, she pointed out, since much of the immovable property tends to be in the name of the husband or father. The bank, which was set up in November last year, has begun to receive queries for its various credit schemes (so as for short term loans from Lend Genius) such as kitchen loan, loans to set up beauty parlours, day-care centres and catering units apart from plain vanilla products such as car and education loans.

Click Here for details and the Bank’s website

Business Ideas, Networking, News

The Entrepreneurship Summit 2014

22/01/201405/03/2017 yazdi

The Entrepreneurship Summit 2014 – 1st -2nd February, 2014 | IIT Bombay www.ecell.in/esummit

The Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Bombay presents the Entrepreneurship Summit 2014- a confluence of industry veterans,business leaders, entrepreneurs,visionary students and anyone who wishes to be the one of those bent on creating a dent in the universe.

The Entrepreneurship Summit 2014 has got UN patronage which is UNESCO’s highest form of support granted to demonstrate the Organization’s moral endorsement of an exceptional activity.

Speakers

The E-Summit ‘14 is proud to play host to yet another panel of esteemed guests ,renowned businessmen from across the world. Some of them include (Full list here):

Bharat Desai, Founder and CEO, Syntel	Sachin Bansal CEO and founder, Flipkart
Bharat Banka CEO,Aditya Birla Private Equity	Rana Kapoor CEO and founder, Yes bank
Mr. Anand Kumar – Founder Super 30	Varun Agrawal – Co-founder, Alma Mater
Steli Efti – CEO Elasticsales, San Francisco	Avani Davda- CEO, Tata Starbucks Limited
Susan Sweeney, Social Media Marketing Expert	Asher Hasan,Asian Entrepreneur of the Year 2011
Yu kai Chou, Gamification Guru	Mukund Mohan-CEO,Microsoft StartupAccelerator
Alexander Blass, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Wharton School	Prakash Amte , Social Activist

Workshops and Panel Discussions

It is not just our speaker line-up that we pride ourselves in, but also the quality of workshops, panel discussions we offer.

Workshops	Panel-Discussions & Trends Today
Lean Methodology	E-Commerce: The Inside Story
Gamification	Big Data
VC Funding	Mobile Space
Social Enterprise Bootcamp	Job vs Entrepreneurship
Design Thinking	These products for Mobile Gaming
Entrepreneurial Finance	Cleantech
User Experience and Product Design	How to get your startup idea funded
Debt Funding	Education Technology
Business Model Canvas	Healthcare
HR for Startups	Social Entrepreneurship
Social Media Marketing	Social Campaign by E-Cell

Networking Arenas

1. Investor’s Arena: A platform wherein you get to pitch your idea to major VC firms in the ecosytem (Nexus Partners, SAIF Partners, Indian Angel Network) by filling in this form and getting an appointment with them on the day of the E-Summit.

2. Business Mentoring Hub: A platform wherein you can get expert mentorship on various problems you are facing as a startup. Fill this form, and if you get selected, you get a meeting scheduled with them on the day of the E-Summit.

3. Co-founder’s Arena: This is a team building platform for two kinds of people,

a.) ones who are looking for a design/coding/sales etc. team mate for their startup

b.) ones who are coders/designers/salesmen etc. and are looking to join a good startup idea

If you are either of them, you can register for Co-founder’s Arena here.

4. Idea Validation Arena: A platform where you can get your idea validated by the best experts in the Indian startup ecosystem. You can register for Idea Validation Platform here and if selected you will get to validate your idea with a mentor on the day of E-Summit.

Crowd Funding

Crowd Pitch: A crowd funding pitch competition wherein you submit your idea here and 15 ideas out of them get to pitch in front of a crowd and compete for a cumulative prize worth Rs. 1.3 lakhs.

The Lean Startup Machine Bootcamp
The Lean Startup Machine Bootcamp is a 9 hour long workshop where the participants will learn how to apply Lean Startup Methodologies to build products customers will pay for. This is not a Hackathon nor is it a conference. This is an immersive, 9 hour experience at the end of which you will have a working MVP (Minimum Viable Product) on hand.

Speaker & Mentor: Adam Berk, Director of Entrepreneurial Science at LSM, Entrepreneur

To know more, visit:http://ecell.in/esummit/leanstartupmachine

How to attend?

Join us on facebook: facebook.com/ecell.in

Tweet using #eSummit14

PRICING

Student (contingent) – Rs. 200/-

Student (Individual) – Rs. 300/-

Professional – Rs. 1000/-

Note that by registering for E-Summit once, you will get unlimited access to any of the 14 competitions, 16 workshops and numerous speaker sessions.

For Queries
Mahak Maheshwari

Contact: +91-9833429735

email: mahakmaheshwari@ecell.in

Education

20 Business Lessons you don’t want to learn the hard way

09/01/201409/01/2014 yazdi

Here are 20 business lessons that might just save you a headache –
1. You can’t do everything on your own
2. You may think your product is perfect, your clients won’t
3. Do one thing really well
4. Get paid before you hand over a project to your client
5. Undercharging is not sustainable in the long run
6. Patience and sustainability help you tide over hard times
7. Build for your actual market

8. Never enter a partnership without a buy / sell agreement

And many more………….

Click Here for the full story at Forbes

Business Ideas, Mentoring, Motivations, Networking

What’s Hot: Media & Entertainment

08/01/2014 yazdi

Key Topics

Speaker focus introductions in the media and entertainment space
Opportunities for startups in media and entertainment space

Who are the various buyers of the various media focused businesses that are coming up? What are they looking for?
How can the start-ups gear themselves for more fruitful sales meetings?
Who are the investors in the media and entertainment space?
What are the recent deals that have happened? What are the investors looking for?
How can start-ups beef –up their pitch better?

Click Here for more details about this TiE program to be held on Friday, January 10, 2014 – 5:00pm – 7:00pm