IIMB Promotes Women's Entrepreneurship and Digital Inclusion

By: WE Staff | Wednesday, 13 July 2022

Eximius 2022 was hosted on July 9 and 10, 2022, by students of the two-year full-time Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP) at IIM Bangalore.

The event was held after a two-year hiatus and had the motto "Start. Scale. Sail." Speaker sessions, workshops, and business case competitions in a variety of fields—including marketing, finance, analytics, and more—were all part of the event.

Professor Sourav Mukherji, Dean of Alumni Relations and Development, Professor R. Srinivasan, Chair of the PGP and PGP in Business Analytics, and Tushar Arora, Senior Financial Specialist, The World Bank, who was also the Chief Guest, officially opened the summit.

Arora spoke about the need for women's entrepreneurship and digital financial inclusion as well as the World Bank's introduction of accessible tools like BETI, a platform that aids female entrepreneurs in keeping digital records of their businesses.

Entrepreneurship as the foundation

First Mission Director for the Atal Innovation Mission and Additional Secretary at NITI Aayog Ramanan Ramanathan suggested a three-pronged strategy to instil an entrepreneurial attitude in today's students. The development and significance of social entrepreneurship in India were highlighted by Madan Padaki, founder and CEO of 1BRIDGE, and Ashok Kamath, chairman of the Akshara Foundation. “If you can go and create opportunity, people will take it up and adapt to it," said Madan Padaki, emphasising the significance of taking advantage of the proper opportunities.

Three healthcare entrepreneurs—Sohit Kapoor, co-founder of DRiefcase; Mehak Malik, co-founder and CEO of Uvi Health; and Pritish Gupta, founder of Dozee Health—discussed their entrepreneurial journeys and key takeaways in a panel discussion titled, "Thinking Health, Thinking Entrepreneurship."

Sohit emphasised the significance of healthcare, saying, “It has taken Covid for the whole world to wake up to healthcare. The biggest myth about the healthcare industry is that doctors do not like technology. In fact, the onus is on us to provide the doctors with a good solution — the use case needs to be worked out for them”.

Yashish Dahiya, an IIMA alumnus and co-founder of PolicyBazaar, spoke about "How to create a start-up in entirely new space." He claimed that IIMA helped him realise that being an entrepreneur was what he was meant to do. While talking about start-up culture he said: “If you ask us what our culture is, it has to do a lot with selflessness”.

In his presentation on "The Rise to Being the Powerhouse of Data," Manish Jethani, Co-Founder of Hevo Data, informed the students about the distinctions between B2B SaaS and B2C Saas. He also emphasised the value of being open to using technology to address issues in the real world. “If you do not know technology in the next few years, the situation will be similar to being a genius but not knowing how to speak.”

workshops and exhibitions

Workshops on "How to Analyze a Stock" by Shashank Udupa, Founder & COO of Avalon Meta, "Legal 101 for Start-ups" by Jalaj Joshi, Managing Partner of Crystal Legal, and "How to Start your Own Podcast" by Anurag Manik, Host of M-Square Podcasts, were among the topics covered at Eximius 2022.

A broad group of investors, business owners, and customers were present at the event, which also gave start-ups the chance to display their products. Phable, Readon, Neuphony, Multibashi, and other significant startups were among those mentioned.

Teams presented their ideas that could influence the direction of enterprises at BzzWings, the B-plan competition held in collaboration with NSRCEL, IIMB's innovation and entrepreneurship hub.

There were many aspiring business owners present at Pitcher Perfect, IIMB's equivalent of Shark Tank where start-ups pitched their ideas to investors and venture capitalists in the healthcare and education industries.