The Coalition is a unique concept helping young entrepreneurs connect with like-minded people. They can also share ideas and collect funds. Divya Kaushik reports
What would you do if you have a brilliant idea to start your own venture but no money to fund itIJ Chances are that you will use your social networking skills to find financers or will seek help from crowd funding websites. But these two are not the only options. Keeping in mind the huge force of creatives that are coming up with interesting business models, there are platforms being created to help these creatives network, learn business skills and find financers. One such event that started this year in March was ‘The Coalition’. The first edition of the event, aimed at providing young entrepreneurs a platform to connect with people, skills and money that can turn their passion into profitable, scalable and sustainable business, was a new concept to people and therefore there was a not huge number that could benefit from that.
But for the second edition, to kickstart at Buddh International Circuit from February 27-March 1, the word of mouth is doing wonders. Also to be noted is the fact that in the last few months, there has been a significant increase in the number of people looking for such platforms. “The reason we launched this kind of an event was because we realised that most people who want to start any creative venture face networking problems and most time is wasted in connecting with the right people. We are not exactly doing the same thing as the crowd funding websites. We are just bringing people from different fields together to share ideas and benefit from each other,” shares laura Quinn, one of the co-founders of The Coalition.
Workshops and discussions with experts from different fields are an important part of The Coalition, therefore even if you just have an idea and are clueless about how to take it forward, you can get direction and case studies from an event like this. “From music venue owners to app designers, gallerists to design studios and photo agents to fashion labels, The Coalition is open to all sort of creative people. We will have speakers to share stories of creativity, innovation, leadership and business. The workshops will help participants learn how to get the idea off the ground, how to explore key industry issues, master IP and investor equity deals. There will be legal, finance and recruitment experts to provide guidance.
The Coalition will continue to run programmes through the year, providing creative entrepreneurs with support, tools and resources,” shares laura, who feels that there may be an increase in the number of creative entrepreneurs but the industry is still in its nascent stages to come and support them. “There has been some help available online but there is always an element of risk in that. The advantage here is that you can interact with people directly and take your time to decide how to take the things forward,” adds laura.
Even after the end of the event, there will be a series of programmes like TC/Inspire which will have community events, speaker nights and meetups in cities around the country, bringing together the creative business community. TC/Fuel is an online-offline learning resource, supplemented with tutorials and workshops answering a range of questions relevant to all kinds of creative entrepreneurs and TC/Ignite is an attempt to create tangible financial advantage for a small business through a tailored fast-track mentorship programme.