Participation of NIIT Students in Startup Insider Session

On Thursday 31/1/08, NIIT Students had an opportunity to attend exciting and unique session "Startup insiderCoffee" arranged by LMKR incollaboration with P@SHA. The goal of this initiative is to mentor people on their business ideas and the mentors are no other than successful entrepreneurs. No doubt this session was one of its kinds in Pakistan. What makes it more attractive and exciting is that Instead of the traditional kind of seminars, purely an informal interaction approach was followed. The industry panel consisted of 9 CEOs of successful companies, 1 representative of the US-Aid / Competitiveness Support Fund,4 other young leaders who are not only running successful firms but alsovolunteering their time to help the industry.

NIIT students showed their active participation in the session by asking various important Questions/sharing their ideas for example: Which ideas fall under the discipline of Entrepreneurship? Importance of businessplan? What if the plan fails? Where to get the starting capital for the business? When is the best time to launch the idea? how would you monetizea blog? Importance of Entrepreneurship as a subject? etc. One of the majorpoint accentuated in the meeting was "Entrepreneurship as a subject". The panel agreed that Entrepreneurship must be integrated as an essential subject in the curriculum and this subject is already being taught in NIIT since 2005.

This opportunity was highly beneficial for the students as a lot ofstudents were successful in finding industry mentors for their ideas which is extremely vital in converting ideas into business. The feedback from students is highly encouraging and they are looking forward to attend such valuable events in the future. Special thanks goes to DG NIIT for motivating the students to attend and benefit from this opportunity.