The final-year students of the Digital Communication Management course in Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) are learning business, not through case studies, but by a hands-on approach.
The PGP in Communications Management students at the B-School recently completed a six-month project, taking an entrepreneurial leap by planning and then executing their business plans.
Of these 14 students, five were shortlisted by UK-based investor and Director at Cohezia, Chandresh Pala and his team.
Given the mutual interests of the students and venture capitalist Pala, some of the projects can potentially see the light of the day.
“I was impressed by how well connected they were with their projects and so open to correctly identifying problems within the same,” said Pala in a press statement.
Explaining the modus operandi of the six-month project, Siddharth Deshmukh, Strategy and Partnerships Director at Cohezia said: “We encouraged a ‘fail-fast’ methodology — the more you fail, the quicker will be your learning from the same.”
Some of the ideas that clicked well with investors included Sidharth Uchil’s business plan that links social networks to an online platform for product recommendation and advocacy.
A MICA student, Uchil’s e-business focuses on monetising social media recommendations.
Another MICA student Anshul Agarwal, has a popular Website for learning and developing vocabulary through memes — funny visuals.
“We developed a prototype, ran it in the market, derived and applied its results to the project and developed a revenue model for the same, based on our findings,” said Agarwal in a press statement, describing the six months spent on the project.
Similarly, Prerna Gupta has an e-commerce Website for price-negotiation for buyers and sellers.
Safna Laskari, another shortlisted student from the B-school, pitched the idea for a mobile app that lists retailers offering various deals.
Learning experiencePresenting a Web site for customising designer labelled luxury products, Sarabjeet Kaur notes that the best part of the project was learning from real-world markets, while still being rooted in the safe environs of MICA.