OpinionIt was 20th Feb. I was at the E-Summit at IIT Delhi. As I changed halls for one session and then another, I felt a certain level of unrest, a high level of curiosity in the students of the E-cell. While moving out of the Dogra Hall I met a student who was struggling to establish a rapport with Ashish Kapoor of the restaurant brand, Yo! China. I wanted to catch up with this young little businessman in the making after he had all his queries answered by the restaurateur.
Hey, you from E-cell IIT Delhi? No, No Ma’am I’m from E-Cell of IMT Ghaziabad,’ he replied respectfully as his fellow colleagues started drawing closer to him. Within seconds I was standing in the circumference of a considerable circle. ‘Are you the student leader at IMT?’ I shot out my guess. No, please wait, I’l call him, he’s here. Another 3 seconds and the small, dark, bespectacled student leader had been conjured up from among the swarming crowd. ‘Yes, ma’am, yes ma’am,’ he ushered in. ‘So you set up the E-Cell at IMT, how, you had your faculty helping you out? Who took the intiative? ‘Ma’am we did it on our own,’ he added humbly. Actually one professor from IIT Delhi had come in to deliver a lecture on entrepreneurship and thereafter we were motivated to start our own E-cell. Okie, I said lovingly, impressed with his energy. So what all do you guys do here? We conduct seminars, conferences network with E-Cells in other colleges. Hmmmmm…so are you really interested in busin……I had not even completed when I had the whole circle diffusing all my doubts about their seriousness. ‘Yes ma’am’ was a loud echo. ‘See I am a business journalist with interest in entrepreneurship,’ I introduced myself rather late but the moment I did it, I had the entire coterie looking at me as if I were Miss India 2010. ‘Achcha…tell me what kind of stuff would you like me to write about you so that it can be valuable resource for you people? Do you want business advice, say on the how tos of business…finance?...marketing..? No ma’am actually we have consultants visiting the campus who help us with business know hows. What most of us need at the moment is validation of our business idea. When a student is struck with a business idea, he does not know who are the right people to talk to, how to get it validated and go ahead with it. This is how you can help us other than giving us the publicity which newspapers are not giving. ‘I see, I would like to stay in touch with you guys to know your issues and problems more closely, I tell the crowd. ‘Yes ma’am sure…please, here’s my card’. And here’s mine, I offer my card as I launch a bright smile in salutation to their entrepreneurial spirit.
