IIM Ahmedabad’s Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship & Entre Club Present
IIMA Annual Venture Conclave 2007
Organized for the first time in 2006, the Annual Venture Conclave at IIMA aims at bringing together VCs, Entrepreneurs and budding start-ups together on a common platform. The day-long event (10AM-6PM) consisted of talks regarding various aspects of venture planning by Venture Capitalists, legal issues involved in setting up and sharing of venture experiences by famous entrepreneurs. The event concluded with a Panel Discussion. Apart from the speaker sessions and the panel discussion, the event took the next step in bridging the gap between budding entrepreneurs and potential investors through closed-room sessions where the entreprene urs discussed their plans with potential investors.
The objectives of the event were three-fold:
• To provide students and budding entrepreneurs an opportunity to meet and network with VCs & investors and get feedback on their business ideas.
• To facilitate the sharing of first-hand experience with students, by entrepreneurs.
• To provide an opportunity to incubatees/entrepreneurs to pitch their plans to potential investors for funding (close to 12 shortlisted teams would be discussing their ideas)
Among the distinguished panel of speakers were Mr Vishnu Varshney (CEO, GVFL), Mr Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners, Band of Angels), Mr. Mahesh Murthy (Passion Fund), Mr. Shravan Shroff (Shringar Cinemas), and Mr. Vijay Shukla (ValueFirst Messaging) among others.
The past few batches of IIMA have seen many students rejecting fat domestic and international packages to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. As this entrepreneurial spirit is demonstrated every year by the students, Entre Club (the student entrepreneurship club) and the Centre for Incubation Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE), are striving hard to do everything possible to grow and strengthen this culture among students. Last year, Sarath Babu created news by starting his catering business. This year, it is a group of four students who have created a buzz by their decision to venture into a business of —– production and retail, rejecting the option of joining multinational companies with fat packages, two of them being dollar salaries paid to students of top European and US B-schools. These recent developments can be taken as a good sign as the IIMs have often been criticised of not creating enough entrepreneurs.
The annual VC conclave this year was organized with the partnership of Indian Bank.
Entre Club hopes to grow it in terms of reach and network in the coming years.
Contact:
Vikas Nair
5vikasn@iimahd.ernet.in
+91-9979429270
Pranay Gupta
5pranayg@iimahd.ernet.in
+91-9924102269
