From a marathon to movies to sessions generating entrepreneurial ideas for boosting rural India, E-Week at Jaipuria Institute of Management Noida was action-packed and fun-filled.
Students used their imaginations and let their dreams soar from February 11-18 as the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and Wadhwani Foundation sponsored E-Week focused on creating public awareness of today’s biggest business opportunities and encouraged participants to learn skills and attributes that will reflect on their role as leaders and innovators of tomorrow.
“In NEN week, we get to implement our theoretical knowledge into business plans, marketing and advertising strategies and it’s amazing what we sometimes come up with,” said PGDM student Neha Verma.
With each day having a specific theme, the week kicked off concentrating on education and a summit was held on shaping the future of education and improving its quality. A book fair, along with events and quizzes centering on marketing, managing, ethics and negotiation rounded out the day.
E-Week was crammed with events such as a cricket match for charity; a “go-green” event – tree planting; kite flying to inspire students to give wings to their dreams; a “go green and save energy” themed marathon from the campus to Haldiram’s and self-defence classes for girls – teaching them to protect themselves when unforeseen circumstances arise.
Movies were screened, such as Real Steel which was shown to illustrate how technology can be used in inventing the future.
An artistic theme dominated the third day with poster making, creating a product from waste materials, improvisational acting and films on Indian growth.
Throughout the rest of the week, the days were filled by skitson environmental awareness; painting of posters and faces; a writing competition on climate change; more tree planting; a street sweeping event to promote cleanliness and a mock parliament.
Events were held covering ways of helping rural India, including discussions on possible new products to aid agriculture; a documentary competition on rural India; the use of cloud computing in agriculture and entrepreneurial ideas on boosting employment in the rural sector.
Day six saw a competition where participants used their imagination to create and promote a product which would benefit the rural market.
Generating electricity via solar power in rural areas was the judged the top idea.
The winner of the “Selling Online event,” PGDM General student Saaransh Garg, promoted a “moveable classroom” – a classroom in a vehicle which would cover more than one town in rural India.
“NEN week is a very helpful activity,” said Saaransh. “We sometimes don’t know what we are capable of and when we participate in such events we lose our fears and we share ideas and come to realize our potential.”
In other competitions, teams were given an unsuccessful product and challenged to reintroduce it successfully by making innovative changes and individuals and teams were given a platform to come up with their own unique product and promote it using all their marketing and entrepreneurial skills.
E week is held across the country building support for entrepreneurs while encouraging them to launch start ups. It was anticipated there would be more than 6,00,000 participants, with the campaign seeing active involvement from more than 30 organizations that support entrepreneurship, corporate entities, industry captains, experts, non-profits, and faculty leaders.