Business Conclave, 2015 at SRCC

"It's not always about ideas, it's about making them happen."

Business Conclave 2015, held from February 11 to 13, 2015, was in keeping with this mission, is motto being 'Initiate, Ideate, Innovate.' Held annually at one of the country's most prestigious commerce colleges, the Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, the conclave attracts school and undergraduate students from well-known schools and colleges from all over India. A team of 3 students from our School, Mehar Kaur, Arunima Bhutani and Rohan Gupta, all from Class XI Commerce, qualified for the final round at the conclave from 60 entries from all across the country!

Day 1 began with an enriching session by Mr. Pawan G Agrawal, CEO, Mumbai Dabbawalas' Association. He narrated inspiring stories of dabbawalas in Mumbai. He emphasised the importance of passion, commitment and time-management at every stage in life. Veterans from public life, Mr. Digvijaya Singh and Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi then presented their views on the topic 'Achche Din- myth or reality'.

The first phase of the Young Leaders' Initiative was 'Pol- Khol', where we were to formulate an agenda for our newly-created 'Hindustan Vikas Party.' It was a fun-filled round with challenging interjections. We realised how easy it is to sit back and criticise the political setup but how tough to pen down even an agenda, leave aside, a strategy for its implementation! [gallery] Day Two was a day we all were specially looking forward to as it had some of the best speaker- sessions. We had the privilege to attend a session by Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Honourable Minister for Communication, Information Technology and Law. He spoke about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a 'DIGITAL INDIA' which he said, was very much his vision, too. He shared with us the biggest challenge that he faces as the minister for IT, which is the digital divide between the digital-haves and the digital have-nots. He emphasised the importance of physical conversations along with being digitally equipped. To quote, 'Become digitally empowered, but never lose the power of an eye-contact.'

After this enriching session, we didn't know we were up for an even more enriching session. The next session was by Ms. Smriti Irani, Honourable Minister for Human Resource Development. She was eager to address the concerns of students and opened the house for questions at the very beginning of the session. I was privileged to get a chance to ask Ms. Irani a question on the shift in emphasis from formal education to skill development and what according to her was better. She replied that she can definitely foresee a shift from formal education to skill development, but being the HRD Minister, it is her duty to provide for both; it's the students choice to opt for what want to pursue.

Next in line was Auktion-O-Shire, an open auction round of the Young Leaders' Initiative where we had to bid to form our very own city. There were 7 categories -Monuments, Business Service Operations, Chief Ministers, Ambassadors, Languages, Industry and Universities. Our School stood second in this round!

On Day Three, we were excited to step into the last segment of Business Conclave'15. The day started with a session by Former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shri Prithvi Raj Chavan, where, he discussed the challenges he faced as CM. The third round of the Young Leaders' Initiative was a collaboration between schools and colleges. Our partner at this event was Prateek, a second year student at SRCC. In this round, we were to imagine ourselves as villagers with certain characteristics. We were assigned the task of convincing city residents to adopt the same characteristics. This round was very interesting and involved passionate brainstorming with teasers to showcase the desired characteristics convincingly!

One of the highlights of this 3-day extravaganza was a session with Mr. Amit Sachdeva, faculty in the Economics' department at the host college.He is a scholar and has been honoured with the title of 'Best Teacher' by no less than the President of India himself twice! He threw light on the applications of economic and business concepts in real life. He offered valuable tips on how to solve case-studies' based problems. His session was extremely enriching and helped us understand how our real life experiences themselves integrate several basic concepts of Economics.

During our three days' visit to SRCC, we interacted with our a School alumni, students at the prestigious institution, namely Hardik Wadhwa, Abhinav Jain, Arsh Aggarwal, Gurmani Chadha and Parul Arora. It was extremely invigorating and we felt very proud of them.

This three day undergraduate festival is by far the best in its league. It is indeed organised very well by the Students' Union of the college.

We are very indebted to School for this invaluable exposure and look forward to other similar opportunities too.

Filed by MEHAR KAUR, XIC.