Iconic Ad slogans like ‘Just Do It’, ‘Impossible Is Nothing’ and its ilkare slowly and steadily being used by an entirely different variety ofhuman beings and this particular species are growing by the day inIndia. They possess inherent qualities of grit, gumption, passion amongothers. This group lives in voluntary isolation and refuse to swim withthe flow, in short THEY ARE REBELS. I hope you would have got it by now.I’m talking of the band of non-conformist collectively called Entrepreneurs.
Popularized and glamorized by the technical geeks of America, Europe,this word is suddenly acquiring a new meaning in Modern India. Economicliberalization of the 90’s has thrown India into the global centre stagewith tons of lucrative opportunities and millions of Jobs. This has also fostered the global mindset of Indians and an urge to do something ontheir own. Last decade also happens to be the watershed period for theInformation Technology industry and this resulted in numerous intellectual and visionary Indians making their presence felt in theglobal arena.The first such breed consisted of the likes of Vinod Khosla(Co-founderand Investor in SUN), Vinod Dham(Father of the Pentium Chip), SabeerBhatia(Founder of the Hotmail,later acquired by Microsoft for aneye-popping 400 million$), Jerry Rao and Pramod Bhasin(Father of theIndian BPO industry) and many more and these were called as Technopreneurs. Our very own NarayanMurthy, Azim Premji, Shiv Nadar,Ramalinga Raju etc took the plunge when any Indian hardly knew the word‘Technopreneur’.
Post the Dotcom craze and the subsequent Big Bang emerged our secondgeneration of Technopreneurs ready to take on the world with theiramazing ideas, unbridled passion and enthu. Mr Bhikhchandani(man behindnaukri.com,99acres.com etc),Avnish Bajaj(Bazee.com:now e-bay india) andthis list is too long to count.
The fact of the matter is that today Technopreneurship seems to be real,it adds value and normal intellectual junta appreciates it. Infact todayis the right and ripe time to indulge into the unknown world ofTechnopreneurship. All the aspiring Entrepreneurs have so many rolemodels to look up to in time of distress. Their lives have been dissected well enough for everyone to know how they managed to not onlysurvive but thrive. In other words Inspiration is plenty.
Infact inspired by them, I myself have quit my job at a well establishedIT giant in India and have plunged into the food industry in Pune andalso working on some mobile commerce ideas.
I am looking forward to attend this two day conference on Technopreneurship event in Pune incollaboration with Sinhgad Technical Education Society on Sep 29’th andSep 30’th, 2006.Eminent Speakers includes Mr. Hemant Joshi(Associate Vice-President,Symphony Services, Pune), Ishwar Jha(S*r. Vice President - Business.Technology, Zee Telefilms Ltd), Monish Darda ( GM , BladeLogic India,cofounder of Websym Tech),Rahul Bhimjiani ( IIMA graduate,qualifications in Engg, Law and management, CEO/COO’s of variousstart-ups), Gaurav Bhatnagar ( Founder Tekriti software and ex-MicrosoftUSA employee), Anand Chhatpar(*named by BusinessWeek as one of the*“**Best Entrepreneurs Under 25*? in October 2005, featured by CNBC amongtheir “Young Turks” a show featuring upcoming young leaders,foundedPyxoft Infotech Pvt Ltd and OZ Innovations, holds 5 issued U.S. utilitypatents and has 2 patents pending.) to name a few.
Some talks at the conference includeDifferent phases of building new products - validation,prototype,funding, build, launch by Hemant Joshi, Anand Chhatpar willencourage entrepreneurs to take more risks and will attempt to advocatea new paradigm for tech startups i.e of 'ready, fire, aim, fire, aim,fire' methodology, instead of the conventional 'ready, aim, fire' whichis slow and expensive, and Gaurav Bhatnagar's talk on team building istitled as "Dream merchants - selling dreams to build a great team".
I spoke to Ajay Sanghani of ITVidya.com and he quoted, "Young minds arevery fertile. They are full of energy, with high creativity and know how to work as a team, we want to encourage some of them to consider entrepreneurship as a career andPlan to take the technopreneurship event in different cities of India tocreate a large pool of young entrepreneurs."
Good thoughts, I think this is an extremely unique initiative taken byITVidya.com for spreading Technopreneurship and nurture young andup-coming technopreneurs. So folks recharge your technopreneurialinstincts and be prepared for one hell of a Technopreneurship ride thismonth-end in Pune. Run,Chase and catch hold of your dream during thesetwo days.
For more details of the event visit : http://technopreneurship.itvidya.com
