International Entrepreneurship Conference on 'Moving Beyond the Metros' Held at Great Lakes

International Entrepreneurship Conference on 'Moving Beyond the Metros' Held at Great Lakes
Post-event Press-release

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Entrepreneurship is at the heart of economic growth of any nation, and India must also create and nurture entrepreneurs in large numbers to reach the global economic leadership status that it is expecting to achieve. In this endeavor, business schools have a significant role to

play, by developing and disseminating the requisite knowledge, models, methods and processes, besides training and developing entrepreneurs.

Ms. Mridula Ramesh, Executive Director, Sundaram Textiles, said that around 50 million jobs needs to be created in upcoming years for absorbing surplus agricultural labor and that needs to be done in Tier II and Tier III cities and not in Tier I cities. She highlighted the problems faced by entrepreneurs in these cities such as getting senior professionals, talent and cultural differences in Tier II and Tier III cities, which means you need to groom talent from within your organization itself.

Mr. G. R. K. Reddy, Managing Director, MARG, discussed about the role of an entrepreneur. He said that an entrepreneur needs to lead the people, his associates and team members, customers, resource providers as a catalyst. He shall have clear objectives as to exactly what he wants to do. Once he has his objectives clear, he needs to strive for it. One challenge for him is to manage change as change is constant. He needs to foresee the changes in the market, change with regard to customer aspirations, changes in financial markets, changes in technology and needs to adapt according to them. He needs to demonstrate tremendous amount of leadership quality.

Prof. Munish Thakur, XLRI Jamshedpur, contested that entrepreneurship is about risk taking and said it is creating customers with innovation. He gave examples of a few entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, Karsanbhai Patel, Bill Gates, Brin & Page, Capt. Gopinath, etc. It is not the risk taking capabilities but their capabilities in particular domains which are the reasons behind their success. He further said that drive is important as it augments the capabilities. Capabilities need to be aligned with the opportunities.

He based his model of entrepreneurship basically on four factors - motivation, capabilities, resources and opportunities. He said that necessary conditions already exist in these cities but we need to provide sufficient conditions. He said that entrepreneurs have been basically coming from Tier II and Tier III cities but they have been coming to Tier I cities to establish their organizations. He ended the speech by saying that government needs to provide such support so that these entrepreneurs do not need to come to the Tier I cities.

Prof. Pranay Swain, IIM Kolkata, threw light on 'Role of Social entrepreneurship in Tier II & Tier III Cities'. He said that entrepreneurship is all about innovation. Also, for a commercial venture to be in place, one needs to have a market and an understanding of potential consumers. He narrated the case study of Bakul Foundation. And said that he was very much inspired by its punch-line - "If not us, who? If not now, when?"

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* Contributed by -
Ranjit Shankar (Campus Associate),
Class of 2009,
Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai.

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