Driven with an aim to provide multiple & important perspectives for managing present uncertain times & minds and to provide an effective industry-academia interface, an E-HR Conclave 2020: Startup Innovation Spirit of New India was organized virtually by Amity University. Witnessing huge participation by founders and entrepreneurs sharing their immense experience & wisdom with students & faculty, the event comprised of a panel discussion on the theme “Developing Resilience for uncertain times: Start up Innovation Spirit of New India”.
Dr. Gurinder Singh, Group Vice Chancellor, Amity University welcomed the gathering and stated that Amity’s aim is to bring industry closer to the academia and together will be able to find solutions to the challenges that Covid has brought. He averred that Amity is a research driven university that inculcates a scientific temperament and has been able to organize over 1500 webinars in the past four months.
Addressing the online gathering Mr. Naveen Munjal, MD Hero Electric Vehicles Pvt Ltd talked about the roller coaster year 2020 has been and how humanity is pushing ahead and prevailing. He shared the factors that could help people succeed in the future including resilience, perseverance, mindset & responding to the challenges being posed by Covid. He averred that his organization chose to look at the pandemic scenario in an optimistic manner and began training his team to follow the same. He called for students to have a mindset of winning and keep learning constantly.
Dr. Anurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-In-Chief, Business World averred that continuity of leadership matters as it creates excellence. He added that while Covid has brought in challenges, there have been some minds that have used this time to reinvent, re-imagine, pivot & rediscover themselves. He stated that the Prime Minister of the nation is telling families to allow their children to experiment, choose a career of their choice and encourage the entrepreneurship spirit in them. Dr. Batra advised students to prepare for a 3C (compassionate, collaborative & contactless) economy. He also called for changing the culture and not to just celebrate success but focus on aiming high with a global thought. He further added that Covid has taught us to be happy in less and it was important now to rediscover & go back to basics. Dr. Batra shared that in the VUCA world if one is getting a NO it means that it is an indication of a New Opportunity with something better in sight. He called upon students to be resilient and stay in the game He suggested to bring down the cost of capital, land & people in the country to compete with countries like China and become more self-reliant.
Taking the discussion forward, Dr. Iain Martin, Vice Chancellor, Deakin University, Australia stated that Universities are fundamental to the process of entrepreneurship as they are the centre of ideas. He further added that to make the ideas desirable, feasible and sustainable are the skills of innovation that need to be partnered with entrepreneurs to make them a reality. Dr. Martin called for University’s to go beyond a closed space of nurturing ideas to turn them into practical realities. He asked the students to have a sound academic background and be hungry to develop new ideas and skills.
Mr Rajneesh Jain, CFO, Reliance Jio stated that he is very positive on India and its growth because of its demography that brings creativity & innovation with it; technology that is powered with digitization and through self-reliance. He laid stress on agriculture, health, and education to be the torchbearers of Atmanirbhar Bharat. He shared with students all times are good times who know the tools and how to work.
Mr Dimitry Borovikov, CEO, RU Techno Park, FEFU Russia stated that it is required that people stay strong and continue to work to make their countries tough. He shared that student-oriented project program will be announced on October 2 to allow students dig deeper into technological development and invited Indian students to join this initiative.
Prof. M. Ashokkumar, Asst. Deputy Vice Chancellor, University of Melbourne, Australia shared that joint initiatives were being planned with Amity University in the academic domain that got held up because of Covid. He averred that the pandemic has taught people to be resilient and overcome the challenges including going online from offline at the University. He advised students to be resilient and come with solutions to overcome challenges thrown up with situations like the global pandemic. He stressed on a mitigation strategy of thriving through entrepreneurship to further create job opportunities for the community and asked students to be innovative. He also called upon focusing on the basics and fundamentals to mitigate the struggles while developing a product.
The day-long event also had sessions on Survival of the Fittest & Quickest – Building the Next Generation Workplace, Workforce & work cultures; New Challenges - Adapting to changing workforce model with “Make-in India” and Atmanirbhar Bharat.