Entrepreneurship and start-up culture is at its peak in India. To enhance the entrepreneurial spirit even further, BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus organized Coalescence 2015 in association with Intelliber on 5-6th September. Coalescence enticed youth from all over the country with over 3,000 attendees. The aim of the event was to provide a platform for entrepreneurship ideas to receive funding and mentorship from renowned incubators and accelerators and to provide an opportunity to interact with some successful entrepreneurs in various fields.
The final round of the B-Plan competition, Novatia took place with 20 teams in general and social categories. Fizzible Tech Pvt Ltd, Pune and Greensole, Udaipur won the competition in the respective categories. To help out students with intricacies of pitching the ideas to the investors, Pranay Gupta from 91springboard organized an interactive workshop. Another workshop was organized by Knolskape to provide fundamentals of building a real business from scratch.
To possible bridge the gap between ideas and successful business, Coalescence organized the third edition of its conference, ACT. ACT witnessed some big names from numerous fields who shared their ideology and their journey.Some of the extracts from the conference:
- ArunachalamMuruganantham, Founder, JayashreeIndustrees:“We always try to find complex solutions. Think simple.”“Invent something that makes life better. Writing an app is not an invention.”. “I like failures, it teaches you more”. “The best place to learn management is a joint family”
- Rahul Yadav, co-founder, Housing.com:“We’ll be launching our new venture in about 2 weeks.”“I do not believe in definitions. I do not believe in the concept of founders or co-founders”.“An employer should make a culture at work so that people can fit into that work culture and contribute their best there.” “Use commonsense while doing business”. “You should always start your first venture with your friends”
- Vijay Nair, founder, Only Much Louder:“This is the best time to have a talent. There are so many platforms to get discovered.”. “It’s high-time to begin a start-up in India”.“All we need is for the system to let us be”. “I find it difficult to work with artists who have no point of view”.“The biggest challenge is the system, we are at mercy of these people and finding a way around them is difficult”
- Hussain Zaidi, Investigative Journalist and author:“Dons are not courageous, they are cowards. It is very easy to live in another country and give threats but if they come in front of you, they cannot do anything.”“I was threatened about my six year old son. And I did something reckless – I gave the caller more details about my son and said ‘Do what you can’. After 30 seconds of silence, the phone got cut. “Interviewing Dawood Ibrahim was just another interview for me.”
- Rajat Kapoor, Director-Actor: “A beautiful piece of art carries a unique stamp of individualism”. “You will have to believe in yourself. A piece will only become a work of art if I hear your voice in it.”. “How to draw top A-list actors to work in offbeat films? They don’t have aspirations enough as actors”. “Bollywood is not going to change. The audience is not going to change either.”
- TaapseePannu, Actor and Entrepreneur: “Why here only for earning money? Do something you love.” “I do not want to limit myself to one profession. My journey was not planned but I believe in this: Plan A could be destiny, but Plan B is in my hands, so make the most of what life throws at you.” “We only become engineers to figure out what we really want to do with our lives.”
- Naveen Kasturia and Jitendra Kumar, Actors, TVF Pitchers: “I was in a video called ‘MunnaJazbaati’ and I was told that it will never release. So I got a job at Hyderabad. 10 months later the video released and I was called back to Mumbai.” – Jitendra. “I went Mumbai for job but I knew that it was my chance to try my hand in the industry. Fortunately, I got a chance to be Assistant Director is some films and my career took a flight.”
- J Rajan-CEO of Intelliber talked about world’s first AI Based productivity platform Socialyk; being released for public use on 5th of October 2015. “Markets are growing in double digits but most of the SMB’s are unable to taper into this consumer driven growth and not aligned to win over revenues created as a result of this consumer driven growth and therein lies the biggest problem for SMB’s”. “There is a new startup for every 9th person in USA and 11th person globally. If the SMB’s were actually utilizing the rise in markets and innovative capabilities, they would have fewer problems in being a global enterprise. Why there is a new startup in every street is because SMB’s are unable to rise to the occasion”