28th Feb 

Dr. B.H. Nanwani presented the inaugural speech. 

Mr Ashok Pattaar, Trainer and Academician, enlightened us on the topic “Innovation and Entrepreneurship”. He started with detailing about an Italian innovation called ‘Capsula Mundi’ in which biodegradable burial pod turns buried body into a tree. He stressed on the need for building the right attitude and perspective of looking at innovation and entrepreneurship in the Indian Educational System. He further spoke about architectural, incremental, radical and disruptive innovations, concepts of Frugal Innovation & Jugaad were also mentioned. 

Dr Santosh Lomate, Principal- Matoshr Pratishtan enlightened the audience on the topic “Innovation in Agro Business”. He shared his vast experience and knowledge about organic farming, earthworm fertilizers, sericulture and how these are good income generators too 

Dr Prashant Shingre, Director- Vertiv shared his experience on entrepreneurship at Vertiv. He detailed out entrepreneurship plan for aspirational audience and covered points like customer selection, product, financing, resources, operational plan, and working capital requirements. 

Mr Anil Gupte, Serial Entrepreneur who started with an interesting conversation about requirements of start-ups. Importance of need recognition & generation of an executable idea is important. He encouraged the idea of lean start-up & very lean start-up. He also shared details of his latest product innovation, covering need, idea to final product stage. 

Mr. Vivek Kanade , COO- Entrepreneur Development Programme at KUL, who talked about “Entrepreneurship Development Program” and Incubation facilities. He shared his experiences at length about product identification, market research, product finalization, standardization, business plan, project report, resource mobilization and also emphasized on business validation, capital and cash flow analysis.

 29th Feb 

Dr. Bharti Dole, Academician & IPR Consultant educated the audience about patent, IPR, copyright, trademark etc. and how patenting technologies has helped businesses to grow. On the other side, she also shared about ‘Karaoke’ machine technology not being patented and how everyone else made huge profits except the innovator. She concluded with an insightful tip about how to find expired patents and use it as entrepreneurs. 

Mr. Amit Sharma and Jabbar Sheikh, [Bank of Maharashtra] spoke about “Banking & Government schemes” for funding entrepreneurs especially about Mudra Yojna & other central schemes for funding SMEs, MSMEs.

Mr. Shrikant Mandle, Program Officer- Maharashtra Centre for Entrepreneurship Development (MCED), Pune spoke about state government’ s funding schemes for entrepreneurs, seed money provisions, training programs, different limits for SMEs, MSMEs and service companies. He stressed on eradicating the fear of government processes being cumbersome and explained required documents & eligibility in detail which was very useful. 

Lastly, our esteemed guest Dr. Parag Kalkar, Dean- Commerce and Management (SPPU-Pune), chaired the valedictory function and addressed the audience on “Role of SPPU as Innovation and Incubation center”. He advised to up the ante to be relevant in today’s business scenario with calculated risk. His examples, thought provoking analyses about money making business around us were impressive.