The US Consulate in Kolkata has offered its helping hand to students aspiring to be entrepreneurs after their studies from different colleges, universities of Jharkhand. The Consulate today organised a workshop with a not-for-profit organization — The Butterfly Project. The workshop which educated aspiring entrepreneurs about how to start a business and make it successful was attended by 40 students from leading management schools of the State like IIM-Ranchi, IMS-RU, ISM Dhanbad, KIIT Bhubaneshwar, BIT, XISS, St. Xavier’s College, Women’s College Jamshedpur and Tata Institute of Social Sciences.
Themed at Empowering Young Entrepreneurs, the workshop turned very interactive with US Speaker on Entrepreneurship Juan Sabater encouraging young women to ask questions and cheerfully replying to all those. Most of the questions focused on how to start a business and raise funds.
Public Affairs Officer at the US Consulate Kolkata Andrew Posner said in his opening remarks that the topic of empowering young entrepreneurs was something that exited him and was close to his heart. “While travelling through East and Northwest India, I have noticed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is strong, but young business people without their own resources lack access to information and capital. Incubation centres and start ups fulfill a need of the hour in the region,” Posner said. He added that US Consulate Kolkata was working on the ways to support entrepreneurial efforts of Ranchi.
Malvika Sharma of The Butterfly Project said that the workshop was the need of the hour for Jharkhand. “The focus of the session was on how to start your business and how to raise funds-which are issues that plague each budding entrepreneur. The session is a promise to show the right direction to the 40 aspiring entrepreneurs,” said Sharma. She added that the Project is an effort to promote the entrepreneurship in Jharkhand, which keeps focused on women to help them discover themselves through their entrepreneurship dreams.
Answering a question from one of the ISM Dhanbad students Mayank Kumar, Sabater said that any question put by investor to emerging entrepreneur regarding the possible return on his investment was not primarily because the investor remained focused on the profit, but because he actually wanted to know whether entrepreneur did have sufficient faith or not in his own business model and the way he was going to ideate his business. This is why, he said, “I would suggest you not to go against the tide. Do something which has a potential market, and market your idea well,” said Sabater.
“The first thing investors ask you when you go to them with any business idea that how much returns he is going to have on his investmentIJ” was the question from Mayank. After the workshop was over, he told that the session was quite useful and he learnt a lot of new things from there.
Sabater said that the lack of small enterprises and success stories around was also a big problem in many parts of India. “The US economy is very much dependent on small businesses which have been established by entrepreneurs. Their presence and help paves way for entrepreneurship. But in India and many other parts of the world, the very absence of small entrepreneurial success is a hurdle,” said Sabater.