OdishaLIVE Bureau
Plenary discussion at ‘Crossroads 2018’, the annual event of Department of Business Administration, Utkal University
“Entrepreneurship may sound like a fancy word but it is easier said than done”, echoed the brilliant minds of Odisha at the panel discussion ‘Indiapreneur 2030 – Leading through Innovation’.
The discussion was part of the two day annual celebrations of Department of Business Administration, Utkal University, titled Crossroads 2018.
The panel discussion was aimed at helping young business administration students at getting a real feel of the life outside the campus and get life-changing advice from the people who are successfully running enterprises of their own. The moot point was to discuss the scenario of entrepreneurship by the year 2030.
The panel moderated by Mr. Dasrathi Das, Head of the Department of MBA, Utkal University consisted of eminent speakers like Ms Jayashree Mohanty, President, Luminous Infoways, Mr Debasish Mahapatro, Director & CEO, Verve Consulting, Mr Jaynarayan Pujapanda, Founder, Paris Bakery, Mr S. Siddhartha, Founder, Max Solutions, Mr Nilambar Rath, Founder & CEO, OdishaLIVE, Mr Santosh Kumar Tripathy, CEO, Corus Technosoft and Mr K C Mishra, Founder & Director, eKutir.
The discussion was initiated with Ms. Jayashree Mohanty speaking about how entrepreneurship is about doing good deeds to help everyone. She dwelled on her experience to state that when she started her career, there was no idea of start-ups and by sheer will and determination and a robust support system, she has climbed the ladder of success. “Set your objective to achieve your goal and go about doing it” she concluded.
Mr. Debasish Mahapatro said innovation can be of many types. Radical thought of one person and dreaming of scaling unforeseen heights can also be attributed to innovativeness. “Entrepreneurship is all about trying, failing and accepting failures to move ahead in future” said Mr. Mahapatro.
Mr. Jaynarayan Pujapanda stated his experience of selling a mismatched pair of shoes to a traveller and how he went in time to have them replaced. He said to satisfy your customer and to bring a smile on their faces is what an entrepreneur must always aspire to achieve.
Followed by the deliberation on success, Mr. Siddhartha dwelt on failures of most start-ups in India because of a lack of professionalism. He said innovation is what we Indian’s call jugaad. But he also cautioned the young minds against quick fixes in business. He reiterated that sales is everywhere in your life and to become a successful entrepreneur, one must become a quality sales person first.
Mr. Nilambar Rath took the issue of innovation head on by stating that innovation can be disruption in the current business model or a solution to a problem or it can also be a model to scale upon your idea. He recalled his college days when he had to sell an ad space to his tailor for the college souvenir.
Mr. Rath further implored upon the young guns to read about the life of visionary leader Biju Patnaik who moved adversity to opportunity by his incredulous efforts. “Lastly, one must be passionate about his work, cool in dealing with clients, be ever ready to learn and ask questions in order to innovate and become a successful entrepreneur” advised Mr. Rath.
Mr. Santosh Tripathy then cited examples relating to the lack of efforts and patience to the failure of Indian start-ups. He said “If you keep doing the same thing, you will get the same result. We have underestimated ourselves hence we tend to copy the west”.
Lastly, Mr. K C Mishra delved on the bigger picture about social entrepreneurship which is a challenge in itself owing to the grassroots economic setup of rural India. He said that the year 2030 is the current global goal for sustainable existence. He further outlined seventeen areas of massive business opportunity with more than 5.7 billion jobs in sectors like health, food, education, sanitation, slum development, women empowerment to name a few. “New opportunities are opening up everywhere and innovation is the simplistic term given to demolition of a barricade of thoughts and beliefs” he concluded.
Apart from the plenary discussion, the students also came up with questions on Social Entrepreneurship, Marketing Skills, Artificial Intelligence in Business, tackling fake news to the battle of idea and execution in the modern business setup. The session was lively with lot of engaging conversations and thought-provoking discussions from among the panellists, students rom various B Schools and the audience etc. OdishaLIVE was the Digital Media Partner for the event and the session was LIVE streamed on YouTube partner channel of OdishaLIVE.
