OBJECTIVE
ITM group of Institutions, one of the leading centers for quality business & technology education in India. Starting off as an institution to offer business management education to create future business leaders of the country, to establishing independent universities to train students to become industry ready professionals, our journey has been both exciting and gratifying.
The session was conducted through Zoom with an idea of giving students the following points :
- Experience sharing on Project Management during Covid-19
- Experience sharing on How to become a successful entrepreneur
The Chief Guest for the Session
1. Mr. Arun Bharath Meenathethil,
ITM-Alumni
Batch – 2009
PGDM International Business
Project Management &Business Analyst | Insurance Domain
Mr. Arun started his professional career with Valeo electrical systems through campus placement in 2009 and served various blue-chip companies such as Siemens, Accenture, ICICI Lombard and is currently with Mindtree Ltd as Senior consultant since Oct, 2019.
Mr. Arun is CBAP certified Business Analyst professional with over 11 years’ experience in multifaceted roles as a Business Analyst, Consultant, Project Manager and Solutions Architect. He is a Subject Matter Expert for the North American Property and Casualty Insurance domain.
Currently he is working with Mindtree Ltd, Pune as a Senior Consultant with areas of interest in Insure Tech, Duck Creek and Business Process Management.
His aim is to be a problem solver leveraging his domain expertise and techno-functional skills to drive value and delivery efficiency in Customer Implementations.
2. Mr. Munawar Salih
ITM – Alumni | Batch -2016
Founder & CEO | Marketivator Communication Pvt. Ltd
Brand Strategist | Digital Marketer | Food Innopreneur
Mr. Munawar Salih is a management professional with engineering background having more than six years of cross functional experience in diverse industries in the areas of Branding, Marketing, Strategic Sales and Business Consulting.
During the journey, as a creative entrepreneur, he has established various product lines in the market, successfully undertook business start-ups and headed companies with foresighted vision.
He is an excellent communicator with an entrepreneurial bent of mind &and a consultative sales style, with the credit of success on market identification, positioning, branding and revenue building.
His ultimate aim is to be keep progressing and build everyone through the clear and creative solutions. Hence he would be sharing brand stories and taking you all along, in this creative entrepreneurial journey.
1. Project delivery during Covid-19
During the COVID-19 pandemic the amount of activity to be coordinated and mobilized can feel overwhelming. This few months when covid-19 happened there was drastically changes and some of us at the onset afraid that how it is going to plan out and how everything will work according to plan, but at this point something that matter was perseverance.
v How India Became A PPE Kit Manufacturing Hub
India is now the second-largest manufacturing hub for PPE kits in the world. India started manufacturing PPE kits within two months of the coronavirus outbreak. This was the time when COVID-19 cases were on the rise, and there was an urgency to import PPE kits for healthcare workers on the frontline dealing with the pandemic. Gradually, to keep up with the growing demand, several Indian companies started manufacturing its own PPE kits. India now produces 4.5 lakh Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suits daily, and over 600 companies in the country are certified to manufacture PPEs, according to the Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Textiles.
India was never into manufacturing medical textiles—including PPE kits, it was completely owned by China. This has brought us a whole new line of business to us that can be grown, sustained and exported. This was only possible because there was opportunity and we took decision at the right instance.
v The Challenges
The need to properly plan is key, but can be challenging to do quickly and with the right rigor. You might have limited capacity with your team refocusing to meet increases in demand or your resources may be stretched over multiple projects whilst reacting to rapid changes in your business.
There are often multiple meetings with different agendas, stakeholders and priorities. If not coordinated properly, a lack of communication and clarity on decisions can cause duplication, inefficiency, frustration and potentially the wrong decisions being made.
- How do we manage resources and delivery?
- How do we manage time line?
- How do we manage small project?
v There are 4 R’s Pillars
1) Reaction: It is reassessing your current situation and knee to be proactive in your approach.
2) Resilience: It is how knees and how robust are your practices, how good are your people in keeping up the promises for delivery.
It’s all about ownership, empowering people, empowering decision making.
3) Recovery: It is for the instant that once we know that covid-19 is the reality which has caused tremendous changes then :
- What should we do and how should we reimagine the process and deliveries?
- How can we reimagine the accelerator?
4) New Reality: With new reality we have to be focus on:
- What are the advantages?
- Where are the opportunity?
- What are the problem area?
- What are the customer looking at?
- How we can add value to our deliver?
v The challenges we can help overcome
Ø Utilize Collaboration tools
Collaboration whereby individuals work together to a common purpose to achieve business benefit, which enables individuals to work together to achieve a defined and common business purpose.
Whereby everyone interacts in online meetings, through instant messaging, Google meet or via Skype.
Ø Delivering projects effectively and efficiently in a crisis
The failing to deliver key projects and services can have detrimental impacts on your stakeholders. You may not have the right skilled resources to deliver your current projects, or your current approaches may not be effective to achieve success or deliver value. You might find that by not delivering effectively and efficiently, your costs increase or your reputation is damaged.
Ø Maintaining achievable plans under pressure
In high pressure situations, we recognize how difficult it can be to maintain accurate project and programme plans. Things can change quickly and in the absence of accurate plans, it can be impossible to truly understand priority tasks and deployment.
This can result in key dependencies being missed, wrong business decisions being made and ultimately project goals not being achieved.
Ø Daily Champion
Through which the Employee who performed well that day where motivated not only by organization but also by client.
Salary Increment was also given as support for Work from home employee.
2. How to become a Successful Entrepreneur
Basic Tips for Students:
- Prepare yourself to face Challenges.
- Prepare yourself to listen everything.
- Have a proper discipline. Whether it’s education or entertainment.
- Schedule yourself: Make a 1 week or 1 Month plan so as to achieve final goal.
- Up skill yourself for example online courses if required just make sure you are learning something skillful each and every day.
- Have a Mentor in faculty or family to guide you.
- Accept your flaws and work on it.
- Be Focus.
Owning your own business gives you a sense of freedom and empowerment. You can build things and watch them grow.
Entrepreneurs make decisions for themselves, realize their creative visions, and develop lasting relationships with other entrepreneurs, customers, and vendors.
It’s a great way to live. That’s why I’ve founded so many companies — I can’t get enough.
That’s why I’ve put together these tips to help you to become more successful.
1) Stay hungry and ambitious
Running a successful business is not an ego trip for successful entrepreneurs. It’s their desire to grow and provide a better product or service for their customers that keeps them hungry and ambitious. The moment that an entrepreneur stops wanting to learn new things is the moment that complacency sets in, allowing others to overtake you and leave you behind. Which leads us nicely into.
2) Never stand still; evolve with the times
Any successful entrepreneur requires business agility, with the ability to learn and adapt to new methods, processes or technology that can make their business stronger and more efficient. Market needs have always been dynamic: both the business and consumer worlds are ever-changing and what worked years, even months ago might not work tomorrow.
Successful entrepreneurs are never too proud to accept when there are new opportunities to enhance their offering and better satisfy the needs of their customers and the market as a whole.
3) Nurture long-term business relationships
There are no two ways about it, business relationships matter. Almost always businesses will prefer to work with companies they like and trust. Your ability to nurture long-term working relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs within your industry will be one of the key factors in the long-term success of the business. Most entrepreneurs would agree it’s far easier to secure work from repeat customers than it is investing time and money into securing new customers.
4) Teamwork Wins the Game
This is true that initially you have to work solely for your startup, but after a period of time, you need a proper time that to assign work to everyone. It can be a team of just three-four persons, who work in a systematic way. Everyone should match the set of skills and attitude that you require to make your startup work because you don’t have time to experiment. It will enhance your reputation and as you are the one who is leading everyone else, so you will also become more dedicated and will try to set an example for everyone else.
5) Trust your gut instinct, not just your spreadsheet
Sometimes entrepreneurs can be found guilty of being wedded to their spreadsheets and the data. However, in the real world of business it’s never quite as black and white as that! In some cases, your gut instinct and heart are still your very best guide for decision-making. Ultimately, no-one knows as much about your business as you do!
Conclusion was with Q & A