“Without the strength to endure the
• Turn to Page 2 for the
crisis, one will not see the opportu-
second article of the Vision
India 2020 series—Urja. nity within. It is within the process
of endurance that opportunity re-
• Give in your valuable com-
ments at editor. theentre-
preneur@gmail.com
Making Sense of the Financial Crisis
How does a 158 year old company, the 5th
biggest investment bank in the world go bankrupt
overnight? Why the TV channels have lost their obses-
sion with Sarah Palin and are hanging on to every
word uttered by Hank Paulson, US Treasury Secretary.
Though popular articles may have you be-
lieve that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt overnight,
it actually was a culmination of a
series of events which started as
2002, the beginning of the US sub-
prime mortgage crisis. There is no
KHARAGPUR
single cause of the mortgage crisis
The Entrepreneur
they range from poor scrutiny by
lenders, lack of
regulation even
insider trading in credit derivatives
(there has been considerable evi-
dence to account for this possibil-
ity). This mortgage crisis led to the
housing bubble burst in 2006 and
IIT
triggered off the global financial
crisis. Lehman was greatly affected
CELL,
by this credit crisis due to its large
investment in BNC Mortgage, its
subprime lender and also its in-
vestment in other low rated mort-
gage securities. Failure to raise
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
further capital and its tumultuous
losses, led to its bankruptcy on
September 15th.
The mortgage crisis set in motion a series of
damaging events that would engulf the world in a
recession unlike any other since the Great Depression.
The $3500 bn US money market fund, used by banks
and companies for their short term financing was
locked. Many Hedge funds that used Lehman as their
prime broker suddenly found their collaterals frozen
due the complicated structure that Lehman used for
its bankruptcy filing application.
A week before Lehman filed for bankruptcy,
the Federal government announced takeover (or plac-
ing into conservatorship) of two of its biggest govern-
ment sector enterprises, Freddie Mac (Federal Home
Loan mortgage corporation) and Fannie Mae( Federal
National Mortgage Association). Two companies con-
sidered to be “too big to fail” failed, ringing warning
bells all across Wall Street.
A day after the Lehman filed for bankruptcy,
Federal Bank announced $85 billion rescue package
for AIG, the world’s biggest insurer. If AIG had failed, it
was said that an average citizen’s savings and checking
accounts could be in jeopardy. To gauge the magni-
tude of the issue, just try to imagine a situation where,
www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in
19 Oct, 2008
veals itself.”
- Chin-Ning Chu
you are not sure if your money is safe in a bank!
Since Merill Lynch was bought over by Bank of
America to save it from going bankrupt , the next victim
of the financial crisis became Washington mutual, the
largest US savings and loans association. The bank’s
home loan department took a big hit, a hit big enough to
affect the $307 billion bank. Within 10 days customers
pulled out $16.7 bn, increasing the urgency for a rescue
act. This was the first case of direct government inter-
vention, where the Federal Reserve put pressure on
WaMu to find a buyer and even held a secret auction
where JP Morgan was announced as the highest bidder.
The next step by the US government was the
much publicised $700 bn bailout
a.k.a the Paulson plan. Most of the
$700 billion will be used by the Fed-
eral Reserve and Treasury to buy out
liquid mortgage backed securities.
This is done to increase the liquidity
in the market.
Let us stop here for a mo-
ment. Within two weeks two of the
five largest investment banks, two of
the biggest GSE’s (govt. sector enter-
prises) seized to exist and the biggest
insurer was saved by last minute
government intervention. This is
excluding all the activities going on
with Wachovia, Britain and Iceland.
There is no doubt that the
catalyst for the sudden crisis is the bankruptcy of Lehman
Brothers. Unlike Bear Stearns which got a lifeline about
six months ago from the Federal Reserve, Lehman got no
such lifeline. “I never once considered it appropriate to
put taxpayer money on the line in resolving Lehman
Brothers”, Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, said the day
after Lehman’s demise.A statement he would probably
reconsider. Of course arguably, things could have been a
lot better were Lehman Brothers still present. I person-
ally think that the financial crisis is too overwhelming to
be stopped by the rescue of Lehman Brothers.
There has been quite some criticism that the
government intervention came a little too late. There is
also another sect of people who are against Hank Paul-
son assuming the role of god, (a role the US assumes
very often when it comes to foreign affairs) with tax
payer’s money. Only time will tell if Paulson plan is in-
deed sufficient to avert a bigger disaster, which indica-
tions in the financial market from the last few days seem
to suggest so.
Next issue: How the US financial crisis affects India di-
rectly and indirectly.
- Abhilash B.N
Page 2
"Business opportunities are like buses, there's always another one coming."
- Richard Branson
Vision India 2020: Urja
For many years, I had traveled around India and
wondered how to take advantage of the tremendous
craftsmanship that exists in the depths of India. Whether it
is in Nagaland or Gujarat, Kashmir or Bengal, India’s heri-
tage has been rich with artisans.
Yet, for all its creativity, the sophistication of design
and quality of finish were always elusive. Indian designs
were always too complex, too busy. Thus, the potential for
a strong international brand that could transcend cultures
and appeal to a wide audience somehow eluded India.
The answer came to me gradually, and received a
propulsion during a vacation in Italy in the Spring of 2007.
We were staying with Carol and Ginou in the Tuscan village
of San Giovanni d’Asso. One evening, their friend Alessan-
dro came for dinner. Alessandro had been a top executive
at Giorgio Armani in Milan, and had traveled widely in In-
dia.
The question I was asking was also on his mind.
And that evening, under the Tuscan moon, Urja was born.
Urja, by the way, means born out of creative energy in San-
skrit.
Over the next two years, we simply kicked around
the ideas, talked with people, and worked on recruiting a
core team that could pilot our concept. Our core hypothe-
sis was that if Italian designers were made to work with the
artisans in India in various communities, design sophistica-
tion could be achieved.
We tested this with Lucknow Chikan as part of the
pilot. Our Italian designer team in Milan and our Chikan
team in Lucknow worked together to exchange design
ideas. When the first set of designs came out of this pilot,
we were delighted to see the simplification that the Italian
team had been able to achieve, without losing the beauty,
intricacy, and charm of the original art form.
A simple set of the most elegant dress shirts had
been created.
Alessandro and I were primarily concerned with the
fact that Indian designs were too complex for global taste,
so this was a major milestone for us to reach to convince
ourselves that sophisticated design was, indeed, possible
through this cross-cultural exchange.
The next two big issues were “cut” and “quality control.”
Indian designers had very little experience of what I
call “design for manufacturability” that is essential for a
scalable ready-to-wear industry to come together. They
had experience in designing salwar-kameez, ghagra-choli,
or saris, but very little in western clothing.
The industry had to be trained in cut and manufac-
turing to spec. For this, we turned to Alessandro’s contacts
in the Italian fashion industry, and recruited a top-notch
team of manufacturing experts. Even on the Quality Con-
trol issue, we had the Italians train our teams in India.
www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in
THE ENTREPRENEUR
With those 3 legs of our plan in place, we went
and raised money. I convinced Alessandro to forget his
retirement ideas, and take the CEO role. French Billionaire
Francois Pinault, who also owns Gucci among other fash-
ion brands, funded the concept, and his company became
our long term investor through the next 11 years of Urja’s
evolution.
We created the Urja brand using the Internet, as
well as retail channels. Today, we have flagship stores on
Champs-Élysées in Paris, Via Condotti in Rome, Fifth Ave-
nue in New York, among others.
Our advertising campaign was very Web 3.0. Sev-
eral of our Italian designers and Indian artisans became
celebrities on the internet, since we encouraged them to
engage with the customers on social media and the
Glam.com network.
The side-effect was that we carefully monitored
customer feedback, and in fact, engaged customers with
our designers almost as pre-design focus groups, online.
We learned so much through these interactions, and
every time we were about to launch a new concept, we
could go back to our core customer base and check the
assumptions.
One by one, we incorporated Tassar silk from
Bengal, Rajasthani Block Print techniques, Dhakai Jamdani
fabrics, Gujarati mirror and bnadhni work, Kashmiri
shawls, even tribal artisans’ work, into our collections.
We paid attention to every detail – from buttons
to draw-strings. We had artisans who specialized in mak-
ing the most unique collections of buttons and cuff-links!
Our Italian-Indian fusion brand became a sensa-
tion, injecting a sense of novelty and creativity into the
global fashion world that had, by and large, become bor-
ing.
And most importantly, we were able to build a
financially sound, compelling business that is now sup-
porting the livelihood of 100,000 artisans across India.
Urja, indeed, was born out of creative energy.
However, the business was chiseled and sculpted care-
fully, keeping in mind the core nuggets of our vision: sim-
plicity, detail, sophistication and quality.
And with that, we seduced the fashion world.
©Sramana Mitra
The author is a well known Silicon Valley entrepreneur
who has founded 3 companies, is a strategy consultant for
over 70 companies, including SAP and Cadence among
others, and the content from her popular strategy blog at
www.sramanamitra.com is syndicated by Yahoo! Finance,
Indian Daily, etc. She also writes a weekly column for
Forbes.
Page 3
The world is more malleable than you think and it's waiting for you to hammer it into shape.
- Bono
How free software makes money
Ever wondered why a perfectly respectable sys-
tem like Ubuntu Linux ships completely free of cost all
the way from Africa? While many people focus on this
point, it is actually just a consequence of something else-
Ubuntu is only incidentally free of cost. Good people
donate to it and sponsor its shipping costs because they
like it. Ubuntu is “free software” or “software libre”. Free
as in freedom, not cost, means 4 fundamental rights:
1. The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
2. The freedom to study how the program works, and
adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a
precondition for this.
3. The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help
your neighbor.
4. The freedom to improve the program, and release
your improvements to the public, so that the whole com-
munity benefits. Access to the source code is a precondi-
tion for this.
There are many other free software products
that aren’t necessarily free of cost- Ubuntu Linux is only
one of them. How do these other companies manage to
make money?
Traditional software companies create some-
thing, package it, and sell it, the same way a vegetable
vendor sells vegetables on the street- price per piece.
Simple revenue model. How do I “sell” free software
though? Certainly not like vegetables on the street, be-
cause everyone has the right to redistribute it. So who’s
actually going to come to me and pay for it? Well, it turns
out that there are many other creative ways to make
money. Since the models tend to be complicated hybrids,
I’ll illustrate with examples:
SpikeSource is an example of a very successful
company that follows a pure service model. They special-
ize in maintenance, certification, and integration of free
software into large workstations. They capitalize on the
fact that they have the power to study the source code
(modifying it when necessary) and pinpoint exactly what
went wrong during tech support. Free software typically
comes with no warranty of any kind. SpikeSource fills this
void for large corporations.
www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in
THE ENTREPRENEUR
RedHat offers RHEL, or RedHat Enterprise Linux
which they build by gluing together various free software
components and charge for the service of maintaining it.
They capitalize on the fact that they are familiar with
exactly what they built.MySQL and Trolltech Qt follow a
double-license model. Why would people choose the
proprietary license? The proprietary license offers some
additional rights over the software over and above the
fundamental free software license rights. Yes, it works.
The proprietary license is available at a price.
Many companies also tend to maintain two ver-
sions of their software: a free software “community”
version that the community continually improves and a
proprietary version that can be purchased at a cost. Zim-
bra, the email client, is one significant example. Their
desktop edition is free software but their network edi-
tion for large enterprises comes at a cost. RHEL/ Fedora
is another example- RedHat constantly use ideas and
code from Fedora, the community edition, to maintain
RHEL (No, RHEL isn’t proprietary, but either is it devel-
oped by the community).
Many free software projects are funded by com-
panies interested in seeing the project come up. SuSe,
for example, sponsors a project called OpenSync because
they want to see certain features in it that they probably
wouldn’t see otherwise. They additionally get some good
publicity and a major say in any crucial decision. Instead
of creating their own synchronization solution for their
operating system, why not sponsor an already ongoing
project? It’s far cheaper and they get additional program-
mer passionate about the software to work on it for free
(yes, I worked on it for a while too because I liked it). Just
like Google pays Firefox (yes, firefox is free software) to
get their homepage opened at startup by default, several
companies might have interests in different popular free
software. For example, if OpenSync becomes really
popular and supports synchronization with Nokia and
Sony phones, Motorola will immediately jump in and
help OpenSync support their phones by funding the pro-
ject. Zimbra did so well that it was acquired by Yahoo! in
September 2007.
- Ramkumar. R
Page 4
"I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what
the world needs, then I proceed to invent."
- Thomas Edison
Why have a start-up in a bad economy
The economic situation is apparently so grim that
some experts fear we may be in for a stretch as bad as the
mid seventies.
When Microsoft and Apple were founded.
As those examples suggest, a recession may not be such a
bad time to start a startup. I'm not claiming it's a particu-
larly good time either. The truth is more boring: the state
of the economy doesn't matter much either way.
If we've learned one thing from funding so many
startups, it's that they succeed or fail based on the qualities
of the founders. The economy has some effect, certainly,
but as a predictor of success it's rounding error compared
to the founders.
Which means that what matters is who you are, not
when you do it. If you're the right sort of person, you'll win
even in a bad economy. And if you're not, a good economy
won't save you. Someone who thinks "I better not start a
startup now, because the economy is so bad" is making the
same mistake as the people who thought during the Bubble
"all I have to do is start a startup, and I'll be rich."
So if you want to improve your chances, you should think
far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder than
the state of the economy. And if you're worried about
threats to the survival of your company, don't look for
them in the news. Look in the mirror.
But for any given team of founders, would it not
pay to wait till the economy is better before taking the
leap? If you're starting a restaurant, maybe, but not if
you're working on technology. Technology progresses more
or less independently of the stock market. So for any given
idea, the payoff for acting fast in a bad economy will be
higher than for waiting. Microsoft's first product was a
Basic interpreter for the Altair. That was exactly what the
world needed in 1975, but if Gates and Allen had decided
to wait a few years, it would have been too late.
Of course, the idea you have now won't be the last
you have. There are always new ideas. But if you have a
specific idea you want to act on, act now.
That doesn't mean you can ignore the economy.
Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched. It's
not necessarily a problem if customers feel pinched: you
may even be able to benefit from it, by making things that
save money. Startups often make things cheaper, so in that
respect they're better positioned to prosper in a recession
than big companies.
Investors are more of a problem. Startups generally
need to raise some amount of external funding, and inves-
tors tend to be less willing to invest in bad times. They
shouldn't be. Everyone knows you're supposed to buy
when times are bad and sell when times are good. But of
course what makes investing so counterintuitive is that in
equity markets, good times are defined as everyone think-
www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in
THE ENTREPRENEUR
ing it's time to buy. You have to be a contrarian to be
correct, and by definition only a minority of investors can
be.
So just as investors in 1999 were tripping over one
another trying to buy into lousy startups, investors in
2009 will presumably be reluctant to invest even in good
ones.
You'll have to adapt to this. But that's nothing
new: startups always have to adapt to the whims of inves-
tors. Ask any founder in any economy if they'd describe
investors as fickle, and watch the face they make. Last
year you had to be prepared to explain how your startup
was viral. Next year you'll have to explain how it's reces-
sion-proof.
(Those are both good things to be. The mistake
investors make is not the criteria they use but that they
always tend to focus on one to the exclusion of the rest).
Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-
proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it
as cheaply as possible. For years I've been telling founders
that the surest route to success is to be the cockroaches
of the corporate world. The immediate cause of death in a
startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your
company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. Fortunately
it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession
will if anything make it cheaper still.
If nuclear winter really is here, it may be safer to
be a cockroach even than to keep your job. Customers
may drop off individually if they can no longer afford you,
but you're not going to lose them all at once; markets
don't "reduce headcount."
What if you quit your job to start a startup that
fails, and you can't find another? That could be a problem
if you work in sales or marketing. In those fields it can
take months to find a new job in a bad economy. But
hackers seem to be more liquid. Good hackers can always
get some kind of job. It might not be your dream job, but
you're not going to starve.
Another advantage of bad times is that there's
less competition. Technology trains leave the station at
regular intervals. If everyone else is cowering in a corner,
you may have a whole car to yourself.
You're an investor too. As a founder, you're buy-
ing stock with work: the reason Larry and Sergey are so
rich is not so much that they've done work worth tens of
billions of dollars, but that they were the first investors in
Google. And like any investor you should buy when times
are bad.
Were you nodding in agreement, thinking "stupid
investors" a few paragraphs ago when I was talking about
how investors are reluctant to put money into startups in
- Contd. on Page 6
Page 5 THE ENTREPRENEUR
"Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it's about trading: buying and selling."
- Anita Roddick

Financial Bootstrapping Part 2: Bootstrapper’s

business model
Even before you start thinking on that path-
breaking idea of yours, you need to think on the area in
which your idea lies. It might seem very lucrative in your
head, but there might be other factors not related to your
enterprise which might drain out all your returns. A
golden rule for bootstrapping, according to Seth Godin, is
“Avoid great ideas”. A great idea is one which causes an
entire paradigm shift and can give rise to an entire indus-
try based on it. This certainly seems to be like an odd
piece of advice. Why should anyone avoid going after a
path-breaking idea? Remember, you are a bootstrapper;
your basic motto is to start from nothing and make it big.
In fact, Inc.com lists seven entrepreneurs who made it big
after starting in less than $1000. The problem with having
a really big idea is its instant universal appeal and the
competition which is ready to jump in.
A few characteristics of a bootstrapper’s business
model are listed below: Profitability, protectibility, self-
priming, adjustability and an optional exit strategy. Other
than these basic guidelines, there is no rigid business
model to be followed. Once you get that idea, you need to
start analyzing your value chain before making your busi-
ness model. Lets start with understanding the value chain.
Working our way backwards, the elements of the chain
are:
The end user : Identify who is going to be the con-
sumer.
Product/Service value assessment: Analyse the
worth of the product/service you are offering.
Distribution: Where consumers can find your prod-
uct or avail of your services.
Cost of a sale: This helps tell you whether what you
are selling is worth it.
Next Issue: Start bootstrapping ! Lessons in Marketing
and Raising Capital
- Vaibhav Sinha

Need Money? Consider these

Owner financing Delaying payment
• Credit cards • Negotiate terms
• Second mortgages • Lease equipment
• Personal savings • Selling by commission in-
• "Friends, fools and stead of wages

Minimizing inventory Minimization of accounts re-

• Using formal routines ceivable
to minimize inventory • Factoring
needed • Reward fast payment
• Terminate relationship with
Joint utilization slow paying customers
• Share office, supplies,
Subsidy finance
equipment
• Governmental grants
• Share employees
• Research grants

The Entrepreneur team invites reader’s articles for subsequent issues, comments and feedback on the current issue, and
suggestions for improvement of The Entrepreneur at:
editor.theentrepreneur@gmail.com
www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in
Page 6
"Entrepreneurs are risk takers, willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea
or enterprise.”
- Victor Kiam
Concipio: Business Ideas competition
Concipio, the Business Ideas competition organized annu-
ally by IIT Kharagpur has come a long way in its endeavor
to transform great ideas into successful start-ups. The
past years have witnessed start-ups like P2 Power Solu-
tions (P) Ltd. and Intinno Technologies Pvt. Ltd. leave a
strong impression in the field of entrepreneurship. This
Year, Concipio’08 was launched with an aim to continue
the competition’s successful run on a much larger scale.
The year 2008 has witnessed as many as 43 submissions
in the competition. There has also been participation
from the
alumni and
professors
of IIT
Kharagpur.
The first
round of
the com-
petition
involved
ideation,
with the
partici-
pants submitting the executive summaries of their ideas.
The results of the first round submission were declared
on October 1, 2008. 11 teams have made the cut for the
final round.
The selected entries are undergoing a mentoring process
Taking Entrepreneurship beyond KGP
One of the primary objectives of Entrepreneurship
Cell is to encourage students, not just from IIT Kharagpur,
but all over the country, to develop a positive outlook
towards entrepreneurship. To this end, E-Cell conducted
several workshops in different parts of the country, be-
sides lectures and Knowledge Camps in Kharagpur itself.
The first of these workshops was conducted at
Jaypee Noida on 5th October 2008. Other similar work-
shops were held at Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Bhopal, Visak-
hapatnam and Hyderabad. There, the members of E-Cell
explained the meaning of entrepreneurship to the uniniti-
ated. Students were informed about what one needs to
keep in mind before venturing into entrepreneurship,
such as the SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Op-
portunities and Threats) of one’s idea. They were briefed
on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), an important facet
any prospective entrepreneur should be aware of. Vari-
ous methods of procuring funds for a start-up, such as
www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in
THE ENTREPRENEUR
under the professors of the institute, venture capitalists
and distinguished personalities from the business institu-
tions and corporate world. The number of submissions
has increased, but the overall quality of submissions still
requires some improvement if having more than one
start-up a year is what this competition aims at. One of
the mentors of the competition has sent the following
message across to the students:
“The quality of ideas is amazing, but the candidates need
to get acquainted with the various facets of business
models. I sincerely believe that major steps need to be
taken round the year for students to get acquainted with
the entrepreneurship process. Various facets of startups
need to be evangelized to the students so that they are
better aware and prepared.”
This year, E-Cell organized two workshops specifically for
Concipio participants: one by Concipio’ 07 winners, Team
Intinno and Concipio’05 winner, Mr. Shwetank Jain ( CEO
of the P2 Power Solutions (P) Ltd. ) and another on Busi-
ness Plan writing by the associate members of the Entre-
preneurship Cell. E-Cell is also planning to develop a
concrete program devoted to the development of the
elements of entrepreneurship so as to help the partici-
pants give a refining touch to their business ideas.
The final round judging of Concipio’08 will take place on
November 13, 2008.The winners get an opportunity to
opt for Technology Incubation and Entrepreneurship
Training Society (TIETS) funding up to I.N.R 15 Lakhs.
Venture Capital, were also discussed.
An idea doesn’t execute itself. One needs a plan
to take it to the next level. And this is where a B-Plan
comes into picture. Students were told in detail, of the
various nuances of preparing a B-Plan and its importance,
not only while approaching a Venture Capitalist, but also
to envision the future growth of your company.
The workshops were concluded with an overview
on the activities of the Entrepreneurship Cell. The stu-
dents were informed about the various events of E-
Summit '09, such as, Envision, Pensez and Eclairez, and
were given an idea of how one can participate in them.
The response to these workshops was over-
whelming, with packed auditoriums and attentive listen-
ers. This indicates changes in the mindsets of the student
community, who are more open to forgo the security of
regular jobs and dare to become an entrepreneur.
Page 7 THE ENTREPRENEUR
“I liked it so much, I bought the company"
- Victor Kiam’s ad for Remington electric shavers

Why have a start-up in a bad economy

- Contd. from page 3... CROSSWORD
bad markets, even though that's the time they should
rationally be most willing to buy? Well, founders aren't
much better. When times get bad, hackers go to grad
school. And no doubt that will happen this time too. In
fact, what makes the preceding paragraph true is that
most readers won't believe it—at least to the extent of
acting on it.
So maybe a recession is a good time to start a
startup. It's hard to say whether advantages like lack of
competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant in-
vestors. But it doesn't matter much either way. It's the
people that matter. And for a given set of people work-
ing on a given technology, the time to act is always now.
Source: http://www.paulgraham.com/
badeconomy.html

Across: Down:

1: Indian Premier League 2: Regular publisher of researched and ranked list

4:Current liability of comapany > Britain's GDP 3:Originally Bachraj Trading Corporation
6: Naresh Goyal 4: Putting news first
7:Titan, Taj Hotels 5:Saif's got beard. No problem.
8:Jawed Karim, Steven Chen, Chad hurley 9: Former name of AXIS Bank
10: The less famous Steve of Apple

[Down] (2) Fortune (3) Bajaj (4) BBC (5) Lenovo (9) UTI
Answers: [Across] (1) DLF (4) Barclays (6) Jet (7) TATA (8) Youtube (10) Wozniak

About Us
Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur is a student body which has been started
under the vision and guidance of the Sponsored Research and Industrial Consul-
tancy (SRIC) of IIT Kharagpur. In an institution of students with the potential of
becoming tomorrow’s leaders in innovation for the country, it is essential to
groom these young individuals while they have the time and resources to be-
come capable of handling the pressures, responsibilities and risks associated
with entrepreneurship. The basic aim of E-Cell is to provide students with the
resources and guidance to be able to be job-makers for the future through effec-
tive innovation and sound fundamentals.
The primary activities of E-Cell are
1. Organising workshops and lectures periodically for students to create aware-
ness about entrepreneurship.
2. Function as a guide for students with creative ideas which can be transformed
into successful companies.
3. Provide mentorship through individuals for students launching their start-ups.

www.ecell.iitkgp.ernet.in