IIM Bangalore’s EPGP students hosted their annual business conclave Sammantran on November 1. The conclave, themed ‘India Unorganised – Tapping the Untapped Potential’, brought together a mix of industry chiefs, policy advocates, academicians and business school students.
In the inaugural address, Prof U Dinesh Kumar, Chairperson, EPGP, spoke about the need to collectively address the challenges faced by the unorganised sector. He set the tone for the day’s events and panel discussions quoting from his own experience with a micro-credit organisation.
Rajni Mishra, Chief General Manager, SBI, was the keynote speaker. Her insights on the role of the banking sector and the opportunities lying ahead in organising the unorganised resonated with the audience. She highlighted the role of promoting a cashless economy, raising financial literacy, promoting healthcare and improving agricultural productivity. She further deliberated on the contextual challenge of making rural lending a viable business model. Reiterating the need for tackling agricultural distress, she said that it was time ‘Bharat’ moved from ‘Krishi Darpan’ to a mobile app.
Insightful Panel Discussion
‘Manthan’ – the panel discussion, focused on the challenges being faced in organising the unorganised sector by bringing in leaders from the corporate arena. Led by Prof R Vaidyanathan, an eminent academician and the author of ‘India UnInc’, the panel included Praveen Khandelwal, National Secretary General, Confederation of All India Traders, Dr Debolina Dutta, Director and Head, VF Brands, Anurag Gupta, Chairman and CEO, A Little World Pvt. Ltd., and PC Musthafa, CEO, iD Foods. Prof Vaidyanathan emphasized the fact that only 31% of the total credit goes to the unorganised sector, “And yet the major NPA accounts are in the name of corporates,” he added. The discussion touched upon issues such as convergence of payment modes to encourage more cashless transactions, the importance of entrepreneurship, the increase in efficiency by engaging the unorganised sector and the absence of computerisation despite India going from strength to strength in software services.
The audience were deeply motivated by PC Musthafa’s story of using his MBA to identify the opportunity the hugely unorganised “idli batter” business presents and the way he was able to exploit the same. Dr Dutta emphasised the challenges facing hiring managers due to the inherent contradictions between the existing multiple laws for unorganised sector workers. Anurag Gupta spoke about how, still, only cash works in the Indian economy and there is a greater need for convergence of all payment modes. Praveen Khandelwal gave some incisive ground level perspectives on issues facing the retail sector. The packed auditorium gave him a thunderous applause when he declared, “Do not call us the unorganised sector; we are the most self-organised sector”.
Speaking on skill development, one of the key loopholes in the context of the unorganised sector, Meena Raghunathan, Director, Community Services of the GMR Varalakshmi Foundation, urged the community to understand the importance of skilling.
Hackathon and Case Study contest
Students from MDI Gurgaon, IIM Raipur, XIME Bangalore and other b-schools brought to fore their creativity and business acumen in Nirmiti - the Business Hackathon, conducted as a part of Sammantran 2015. They provided a workable solution to a critical business problem faced by a large nationalised bank. Team Chanakyas (Pranal Prasad Dongre, Mohamed Jaffer Ali and Vinod Sankaranarayanan) from IIM Banglore’s EPGP won the event and bagged a cash prize of ₹45,000. Team Red Devils (Gaurav Kapoor, Soumik Tarafdar and Shishir Sehgal) from MDI Gurgaon were the runners up and they won prize money of ₹25,000. The event was judged by YV Ramana Murthy, General Manager, SBI, and Prof Abhoy K Ojha, IIM Bangalore.
The case contest – Abhyas – too was closely contested with Team Well comprising Abhishek Puranik and Hari Krishna Reddy B from We School of Business, Bangalore, emerging victorious over MICA Ahmedabad’s Aneek Das, Maninder Singh Chhabra and Kushan Dutta. The winners bagged prize money of ₹35,000 and the runners up ₹20,000. The jury comprised Sumit Ganguli, CEO, GAVS Technologies and Prof. U Dinesh Kumar and Prof K Kumar, from IIM Bangalore.
Disruptive Innovations
In the afternoon session, Sumit Ganguli, CEO, GAVS Technologies, described how technology and digitisation hold the key to bringing in disruptive innovations in the informal sector. Quoting examples from developed and underdeveloped economies, he stressed the role of digital technology in addressing challenges plaguing the sector.
To bring the conclave to a close, IIM Bangalore’s incubation centre NSRCEL, gave insights into the start-up culture in Bangalore and enlightened the audience about ‘turning start-up dreams to reality’.
With experienced professionals making up the EPGP batch, on track to become tomorrow’s thought leaders, Sammantran this year played a pioneering role in discussing ideas about a complex and challenging problem. It left the audience thinking about the challenges and opportunities in the informal sector, a deep understanding of the criticality of focusing on this sector and the means to do it, and a closer connect to a workforce, which contributes almost 55% to the country’s GDP.