Classroom Education not enough, TIme for another Venture.

Hello RHs, some of you might remember me here. There are a lot of things I’d like to share and discuss in today’s post. Meeting Alok recently was a great experience. He gave some important piece of advice regarding channelizing my focus and energies on my start up.

My first start up, i.e. rentnread.in is now 3 months old and taking slow and bit steady steps. I have written an article about the same earlier and now another start up is in my mind. (Discussed later in this article)

My first start up i.e. rentnread.in came into existence when I had to pay around 30k to buy books for MBA entrance exams. (What a waste). I did some research on ground and online. I checked my timetable and realised I could easily give few hours to this kind of business and started off. Of course Goa is NOT the right place to do such business, considering its small area, but it was right place for pilot project. The second also I thought should be into education sector. So here we go.

THE PROBLEM/ OPPORTUNITY

I have worked with different industries during my college life. The two industries to which I dedicated most of my time in college years were hotel industry and events, closely related to each other. I worked as a reservation Manager for a chain of hotels having 8 outlets in Goa. My boss had appointed 2 assistants to help me as my working hours were 3:00 PM to 9:00 PM. My assistants were fresh B.Com pass-outs who at time created disasters for me with their e-mail drafted in worst possible manner to the clients. They couldn’t use MS office very effectively nor could they do analysis for me. I faced similar issues when I was working as event manager. The event I was coordinating was a large scale event requiring a lot of data collection and data sorting. Many failed at this sorting part which was left for me to do. In certain cases, my people could not even write a cover letter with their applications.

Then I read few articles which gave me a brutal shock. All they said was, nearly half of the Indian Graduates, are UNFIT to be employed. There were four main reasons for the same. Students lacked the following:

1. Communication skills in English
2. Computer knowledge,
3. Analytical, cognitive skills and
4. Basic accounting knowledge

I feel lack of industrial exposure should also be added to this list.

SOLUTION

I want to design curriculum that would help the UG students in Communication skills, Computer skills, Analytic skills, basic accounting and also in personality development. I would also have a tie up with internship firms through which students would be able to take internships into their field of interest. This course will last for about 12-15 weeks and then an internship of a few weeks. This will allow students a much needed experience and exposure of the industry.

Unlike my first venture, I’m set to do a lot of ground work on this start up and planning to take it off in 18 months’ time with thorough discussions, set plans etc. Let me know if anyone is running similar kind of a thing or would be interested in starting this venture with me.