The Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB) on Sunday conducted Ignite 2015, a national level entrepreneurship summit organised by X-SEED, the idea and initiative cell of XIMB, XUB. The summit included renowned speakers from various backgrounds who came to share their entrepreneurial experiences on the topic ‘How technology has changed entrepreneurship’.
The panel of speakers comprised Anurag Batra, Chairman, Bussinessworld, SrikumarMisra, Founder, MD and CEO, Milk Mantra, KC Mishra, Founder, eKutir and TanmayMohanty, MD, luminous Infoways. Keynote speaker Anurag Basu, setting the stage with a thought-provoking observation that earlier people did an MBA to get a job, but now 90 per cent people want to become entrepreneurs. He remarked that powerpoint presentations are used by people who are neither powerful nor have a point of view, and he wouldn’t be using one.
He pointed out a very pertinent issue that “India only has a poor cousin of the Silicon Valley as we only celebrate success and not failure. He encouraged the young audience to make their hobby their profession and drive their dreams with passion. “If you can dream it, you can do it,” he concluded. Srikumar Misra, an XIMB alumnus, traced the evolving history of music from Vinyl records to cassette players, CDs and the digital age of iTunes. He drove his point home that technology has touched almost everything and spared nothing.
He then brought out the two different roles that technology plays in entrepreneurship: first where technology itself is the basis of the enterprise and second where technology acts as an enabler to an enterprise. He also talked about how the power of technology enables a convergence between economical and societal impact.
K C Mishra pointed out the difference between managing plenty and managing less. It is easier to manage plenty as the risk is distributed; the real challenge lies in managing less. He believes that everybody is a born entrepreneur and the whole economy of India depends on millions of micro-entrepreneurs. He talked about the emerging relevance of the internet economy and the three different opportunities it offers: internet of hardware, internet of content and internet of humans.
Final speaker Tanmay Mohanty talked of the importance of focus. Scope is plenty, but one needs to find a niche area to focus on. He traced through the transformation of the economy from agrarian to industrial, service and now experiential to show how technology has now become a necessity. The conclave concluded with a question-answer round where budding entrepreneurs attempted to satisfy their inquisitiveness and grasp as much knowledge from the speakers as possible.