Lets Start – An Intro to Entrepreneurship
Just the basics!
On March 1st, OASIS Southeast was proud to host 4 local high schools for a Let’s Start Workshop – Introduction to the basics of Entrepreneurship
We had 180 students from Langston Hughes, Banneker, Campbell and Sprayberry High schools.
The workshop started off with a brief speech from our keynote speaker, Ms. Kanchana Raman, followed by an informal interview and question answer session with the students.
About Ms. Raman:
Kanchana Raman founded Avion Systems in 1996. Avion provides value-added end-to-end network planning, design, deployment and optimization services.
Kanchana chairs several board positions. Telecom Industry Association, Quest forum, Emory University, President TiE-Atlanta 2016 -17 and cofounded TYE in 2009 to teach entrepreneurship to high school students.
In 2010, Kanchana has been selected by AT&T to be part of a 25 member AT&T Women Entrepreneurs’ Forum.
Kanchana holds an MBA from Goizueta Business School, Emory University, Executive training from Kellogg Business School, Northwestern University, and Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth to augment her broad experience in telecommunications and technology, which spans over 20 years.
What we did during the event:
The students were then split into 18 teams of 10 and some teams moved to other rooms. They learned about the very basics of whats needed to start their own business – and got to pick their own business idea with their team.
Later they wrote down their ideas as they were presented with more information and were given time to consolidate their ideas and prepare a 4 minute presentation to the entire audience.
We invited some judges for the competition – Jeff Green, Gopi Koganti, Edward Awabdy, Caroline Ferguson, Michael J Liscio and Vasu Bhatt – who awarded a score for each Business idea, Value Proposition, Marketing and Sales Strategy and overall presentation.
The top 8 teams were announced after we got to hear some exciting and new business ideas.
We thank DECA and ASPIRE for sponsoring this event and especially Diane Pruner from DECA who coordinated with us and the schools and helped with a lot of logistics.
We also thank our tireless volunteers, presenters, and our judges for helping with this massive undertaking.
Judges:
Jeff Green, Gopi Koganti, Edward Awabdy, Caroline Ferguson, Michael J Liscio and Vasu Bhatt
Presenters:
Dinesh K Chachidhanandam, Mohammad Kheirbakhsh & Sree
Other Volunteers:
Ashwani Verma, Chitra Balasubramanian, Deepak Patel, Kamal Dupati, Jyoti Patel, Kelvina Burrell, Maria Blackmon, Sreedevi Mullagiri, Vasudeva Bhat & Vibha Singh