By – Shaunak Ghatekari
As the President of the Entrepreneurship Cell of ISBF it was truly an amazing experience being Co-Chair of this year’s LSExISBF Shark Tank Challenge, my memories from the last years Entrepreneurship Conclave are still fresh, I was just a volunteer helping out Arjo Sir (also one of the panelists in Day 1) ensuring there were no problems faced by the participants during their presentation. After the first presentation of the day Arjo Sir critiqued the business models with challenging questions, after the presentation was over just before the 2nd participant came into the Lecture Room I showed my interest in asking some questions too to the participants, and to my surprise he allowed me to ask a few questions once each presentation was done.
The whole day went by quickly because I was really engrossed into the event now that I had a little more important role in it, I asked insightful and useful questions to the participants which even helped them in their second round as the finalists, that day motivated me to apply for the post of President of the Entrepreneurship Cell as well the post of a Convenor of the Core Council so I could Co-Chair this year’s Entrepreneurship Conclave now called the Shark Tank Challenge. To my luck I got selected for both the posts I applied for and that’s when I realised how much work I needed to actually put in to make the event a success this year too. From curating creative and theme appropriate designs to changing the questions to be more so like a Shark Tank pitch, focusing more on the Finances of the Models and making sure their market research was on point but that was on the days of the event, managing the Creative Team, providing them the Creative Freedom when it came to decoration of the venue really helped a lot and working with my Co-Chair Rushikesh also the President of the Core Council who was equally if not more excited than me to make this event a success and build it from the ground up to make it stand out from the last years event.
On the day of the event the volume of participation may have looked overwhelming but everything was managed smoothly from making sure the Guest Panelists were comfortable while they sat for hours critiquing and ranking the business models, to motivating the participants who seemed to have been overwhelmed or demotivated prior to or after their presentations and build new friendships and experience so many fresh ideas which have a lot of potential to help change the world.
The most fun part of organising the event if not obvious was the Marketing of the event, designing our own marketing campaign, building a calendar to post the content at optimal intervals even participate in the videos or reels as a camera shy person, it was a whole new experience and the Marketing Team has credits to make it possible.
The Event attracted more than 100 schools just from Delhi NCR which is bigger than what we had last year for our regional side of the competition, the online round like always was a success too thanks to the long hours put in by our guest panelists, professors and the volunteers and made sure everything happened on time.
Overall this experience was truly engaging and knowledgeable and I hope the President who will take over after me contributes to build this event as legacy with all their heart and do it better than what we did this year 🙂