DREAM MERCHANTS

“You Have To Dream Before Your Dreams Can Come True.”

_ APJ Abdul Kalam

The students at FORE School of Management had a unique chance to gain knowledgeable insights through the “Opportunity Evaluation & How to write a B-Plan Workshop” conducted by Centre Fore Entrepreneurship and then the gauntlet was thrown down before them. The challenge was: coming up with a Business plan. CED’s event Dream Merchant was all about it. The headline said: “It's time now to scratch your mind, enlighten the visionary path and come up with an extraordinary Business Plan.” And everyone made sure that the opportunity should be tapped. After evaluating the executive summaries of various business plans submitted by the batch, CED shortlisted 5 teams for the final round held on 6^th march’13 in Virajam Auditorium, namely Storm Troopers, Small Wonders, Dreamers, Avensis and Avengers.

Each team had an idea to change the world, each member had a vision. But there could only be one winner and to judge that, CED called upon some illustrious minds from the corporate world viz. Mr. Ajay Tandon (Director, Citi Ventures), Mr. Tarun Bhalla (Founder, Building Blocks) and Mr. Abhishek Gupta (Founder, HR Synergy). The idea was that they would be able to better judge the feasibility of a plan by putting it in the real and practical context.

Dream Merchants event turned into a dynamic field where ideas were generated bandied around, discussed, discarded and sometimes, with much apprehension accepted, because apprehension is the key to precaution. Judges were very keen to explore the ideas thoroughly. Teams made presentation and every presentation was followed by an interactive Q&A sessions where students and judges posed questions and challenged the answers. The ideas presented by the teams were varied ranging from emergency medical services to home crèches; from customized smartphones to online forums for celebrity fashion; no avenue was left by the teams. It seemed that every business opportunity that could be exploited had been explored by the students.

Judges with Mrs. Anita T. Lal (Faculty-in-charge, CED) announcing the results.

All the teams were effective in their presentations and incisive in their answers. All the questions were tackled with; teams sometimes found themselves wrestling with contradiction, cornered by the questions but most of them found their way out after one or two bumps. But, Storm Troopers, with their idea of Zindagi 24x7 or emergency medical services (with Mumbai as target city) stole the glory and came out to be the winner of the event. Avengers came second and Avensis came third. Dreamers and Small wonders received praise and felicitations for participation. After a final address to the judges, teams and the audience, the event ended with a residual charm. The charm of a dream we hold close and don’t share because we fear. Something about Dream Merchants made us believe the cliché: Everything is possible.