Day 1

COLLOQUIUM- The Annual Business Conclave organized by IIM Indore had a great start with several eminent personalities gracing the occasion. The theme of the three day conclave is ‘E-Commerce in India- From Bricks to Clicks’. This is the trending topic in all business circles and the students turned up in huge numbers for each of the guest lectures. Day1 of the conclave began with the inauguration and welcome address by Director Rishikesha Krishnan. The first lecture of the day was by Mr.Vaitheeswaran, commonly referred to as ‘Father of e-commerce in India’. He was the founder and CEO of Indiaplaza.com, India’s first internet retail company. He has also very recently served as a strategic consultant for the TATA group on e-commerce. This was followed by the talk on Growth of e-commerce in India by Mr.Shanu Singh, an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Bangalore. He currently heads the E-commerce and Digital transformation arm of Godrej and Boyce Mfg Ltd. He highlighted the trends in the industry supported by data as well as about the challenges the sector faces. The third talk of the day was by Mr.Shyam Katuri, the current AVP-Business unit head at FashionAndYou. Earlier he has served as Director,Jabong and DGM at Pantaloon India Ltd. He is an alumnus of London Business School, UK. With several years’ experience in this sector his talk enlightened the students about the various models, trends in this sector. An enthusiastic question-answer session followed.   Post the lunch hour, a Panel Discussion on the topic ‘E-Commerce in India’ took place with all of the above mentioned speakers and one of the second year students’, John Jose Numpeli acting as the moderator. It was a very insightful session as various experts shared their diverse views on the questions raised. The audience thoroughly enjoyed the session. The last event planned for the day was ‘Elevator Pitch’. It was a competition that was pre-floated to the second year students of the Post Graduate programme. They had to make a two minute pitch presentation of their Business idea to an investor in order to convince him to sponsor his project. The entries were screened and the top 9 participants got the golden opportunity to present it to the panel of judges. Some of the ideas presented by Harshad Sachani, Mahesh Narayan were lauded by the judges. The judges cross-questioned their ideas and this also helped the finalists in reflecting upon their ideas and striving to improve them.