‘AAKASH 7.0’, the entrepreneurship meet, was organized by the Consulting & Entrepreneurship Club on Saturday at IIM Raipur. The theme for the meet was ‘Challenges in an e-commerce startup’.

The event saw participation from zealous entrepreneurs driven towards their start-up dreams. The keynote speakers for the event were Mr. Aadesh Jain, founder 24*7 Health Care Pvt. Ltd, Mr. Prosenjit Bhattacharya, social media handler for konsole with 15 years of experience in mentoring and training, Mr. Shantanu Modak, Director – Bookshelf Academy Pvt. Ltd, Mr. Siddharth, owner of the social venture WashMyCar.com, Mr. Mahendra Kurry, the brain behind noJhanJhat.com and Mr. Suyash, promoter for Jugaad.in.

The meet saw a healthy discussion between the entrepreneurs and the students from the institute, and revolved around the four key challenges faced by a start-up – that of integrating, funding, answering the going concern and tackling attrition. The entailing discussion was about the changing concept of pre-sales and post–sales in the digital era.

Mr. Shantanu tried to clear the fog over the difference between an established company and a startup. Mr. Siddharth spoke about the importance of determining the pain points of the market and offering a highly targeted product. The importance of technology in offering a highly competitive service was emphasized and established in great detail.
While Mr. Suyash touched upon the operational challenges faced by an e-commerce start-up, Mr. Aadesh Jain recounted the funding struggles faced by many a start-up.
While all these portrayed the positives of the digital world, Mr. Prosenjit Bhattacharya introduced a new dimension to the discussion by talking about the ill-effects of Facebook viralism.

The discussion ended on a high for both the students and the entrepreneurs with the students learning the inner mechanisms, hurdles and subsequently bottlenecks for an e-commerce start-up. The speakers, in the process of the discussion, gained newer perspectives from the other visiting entrepreneurs and students.

The meet was followed by an informal yet fruitful interaction between the entrepreneurs and the students with the former sharing their unique business vision and their business models with the budding entrepreneurs.

Aakash was started by the Consulting and Entrepreneurship club, IIM Raipur in 2013 with the vision to help start-ups, entrepreneurs and budding entrepreneurs to address the challengesin start-up businesses such as funding, resource allocation, hiring and planning as well as exploring business opportunities and building an entrepreneurial Eco-system in Raipur.