Discussion With Director (DWD) is a series of freewheeling discussions with corporate honchos and eminent personalities, who have taken an unconventional path and created success stories. It is an initiative of IIMB’s Director, Dr. Sushil Vachani, and the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell to give students an opportunity to interact with them in an informal setting and try to understand and learn what it takes to reach that level. DWD’s first session was held on 23rd September, 2014 with Mr. S. D. Shibulal– the

Who thought that the dissent from the big brother attitude of the Soviet would create an app that would ultimately become a $19 billion golden goose? WhatsApp is one of the few majors in the tech industry that does not collect user data directly from its chats. Now this is the story of Jan Koum or should we say WhatsApp. So the story begins with Jan Koum (from here on we shall refer him to as JK) stuck in Kiev erstwhile USSR with

Entrepreneur@IIMB Name : SOURAV DAS Start-up Name : SuryOn Interviewer : What is SuryOn? Sourav : SuryOn is a social for-profit energy venture focused on developing affordable, sustainable and clean solutions to the energy needs of rural India. The team of SuryOn consisting of graduates and academicians of IIT Kharagpur and supported by XLRI, has developed its first product, SuryOn Apollo, a solar mobile phone charger exclusively meant for rural India. It comes with one year warranty and is suitably priced at INR 450. I: How did you

George Abraham (Founder, CEO at Score Foundation) He was just 10 months old, when meningitis permanently damaged his vision. Today, five decades later, George Abraham has become a legend and a true inspiration for all who dare to think beyond the constraints posed by disabilities. Mr. Abraham visited IIM Bangalore on 17th September, 2014 to share his life experiences in the first ever speaker session of ENPOSIUM - the Entrepreneurship Symposium. The event was held by the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell of IIMB

Mr. Ken Gullicksen and Mr. Troy Malone What does it take for an app to become a billion dollar company? What are the dynamics of the global app ecosystem? In today's technologically advanced society, there exists a huge market for apps that simplify our lives. How does one build a successful app business? Mr. Ken Gullicksen and Mr. Troy Malone, senior managers at Evernote Corporation addressed the above questions and discussed the start-up journey of Evernote in an interactive session organised by the

Entrepreneur@IIMB AMAN CHINDALIA CO-FOUNDER PROJECT PREFIX Jugaadu : What is Project Prefix? Aman : Project Prefix is a 10-month old CA coaching centre based in Hyderabad. It’s a project because we don’t aim to run it as a commercial organization and Prefix as once you are a CA, the letters CA get prefixed to your name. J : How did you come up with Project Prefix? A: I started studying for CA in 2008. During the course I realized that there were a few aspects of

The dust has settled down after the 2014 Indian elections. Psephologists continue to wonder at the success of the mass outreach programs pursued by the political parties during the elections. The biggest exercise of democracy has witnessed the NaMo wave sweeping the country’s electorate and the world is left bemused at the remarkable rise of a common man to become the beacon of a nation’s hope and aspirations. Quite interestingly, technology has played a dramatic, yet unprecedented role in revolutionising political campaigns and

Just think of something you want to do… and now search on the internet to see if you have an app that helps you do it and voila, there it is! The mobile application (or Apps as they are fondly called) universe is so vast that it has pervaded almost all parts of our life – communicating with our friends and family, playing games, listening to music, searching information, editing text or photos, eating out, etc. While the initial focus of Apps was

During the course of your umpteen registrations in several websites on the internet, you have actually helped humanity by your contribution towards digitizing years of old newspapers and books. Well, that sounds intriguing, but how exactly did this happen? By typing those annoyingly unreadable words (like the one in the image) to prove we aren't robots and access online content. In fact, all these days, by doing so, we have helped Google’s reCAPTCHA service by deciphering old texts that could not be read by computers. Not surprisingly 200 million

Entrepreneurs are insanely crazy people who have a flair to see the world in a new light, something unconventional in conventional and embrace challenge and risks with equal panache!! So does an entrepreneur feel satisfied with one biggie in his basket and ride on its glory lifelong or does he look for new avenues for creating meaning at all times??  “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement. The antidote is to every evening  think what can be done better tomorrow.” — Ingvar Kamprad,

It goes Tik-tok. It’s a watch. It’s an i-pod. No, it’s a bit of both but a whole new product all the same – the Tik-tok. When Scott Wilson decided to convert the underperforming i-pod Nano into a simple wristwatch yet keep both functionalities together, he knew he had a brilliant idea but unfortunately, had no way to convert it into reality. However, he eventually stumbled upon a method that ensured that his product could actually be retailed by the likes of Apple,