The projectors bring all kinds of sights and sounds into the classroom, offering a visual delight for practically any device one can connect. The students can connect a laptop to a projector in order to give a PowerPoint book report. The teachers can wirelessly connect state of the art calculators and a projector to work through the complex calculations as a team. The Elets News Network offers an insight.

The classrooms have fundamentally changed since the projectors became interactive. A conventional “smart” board, equipped with a projector, is different from an interactive projector. The former has helped improve ability of the students to learn and imagine in a way, not known or anticipated. However, the latter is a huge improvement over the former. The digital tools have long replaced the traditional tools of learning and teaching. The multimedia experiences have exponential possibilities to broaden the perspectives whether at home or in the office. A classroom is not a classroom if teaching and learning don’t complement each other.

Specifically designed for use in the small and large classrooms, the TI DLP projectors are the latest addition to the long list of digital tools, projecting the images bigger than 100 inches on any surface.

The projectors with DLP technology bring all kinds of sights and sounds into the classroom, offering a visual delight for practically any device one can connect. The students can connect a laptop to a projector in order to give a Power- Point book report. The teachers can wirelessly connect state of the art calculators to a projector to work through the complex calculations as a team.

A visual tour of the historical events through the internet fires one’s imagination. Equipped with DLP technology, the classroom projectors are fast becoming the must-have learning tools to help increase retention, maintain interest and improve the learning experience.

The books are perhaps the most valuable resources available to help the students learn and grow. The library provides the students enough space to explore everything offered by the books. Adding a DLP projector to the library provides a key tool for the librarians to share the value that reading can provide.

With a DLP projector, the librarians and other educators can surf the internet with a group of students to explore the books online. The topics can be researched and new book sources can be instantly discovered together. The students are curious about everything. Sharing information on a big screen with a group, the educators can satisfy their curiosity and enhance the learning experience.

The library is a central learning centre, where the DLP projectors can play such roles as mentioned below:

• Play videos to large groups as part of a core lesson and complement the content with the related books
• Explore new book topics online with a large group of students and teach them how to develop the researching skills at the same time
• Display books online and even read a virtual book on the big screen to really engage the students
• Use images on the big screen to supplement a book as it is being read
• As the library is used several times as a central gathering place, use a projector for key presentations to students, faculty, parents and other groups

Use of classroom projectors opens up endless opportunities like:

• Maximize one-to-one experiences
• Integrate video and sound to maximize learning
• Bring the internet to life and engage the entire class
• Incorporate video into lessons to help increase retention and attention
• Allow students to use the projector for presentations, reports and more
• Incorporate other technologies such as white boards, wireless devices such as TI calculators and 3D to enhance curriculums
• Sporting events, musical programs, assemblies and other school gatherings will never be the same after a multimedia projector is added to the event. The DLP projectors can add a new dimension to any large event.
• Consider a musical program which incorporates visual images to complement the live performance.
• DLP projectors can add video support for sporting events much like a giant “jumbotron” without the high price.
• School assemblies can include video, sound and presentation slides to add impact to content of the event.
• DLP projectors can encourage interaction at school pep rallies. The students can produce the videos reflecting their spirit.
• Educational videos can help communicate key issues to the students and the parents at large gatherings.

Portable Projectors

Teaching has become a more mobile profession. The teachers at every level find themselves presenting information to a diverse group of people both in the classroom and on the road. Portable projectors with DLP technology are key tools that help make those presentations successful.

Portable projectors offer a means to present information to any size of group with video and sound. Impact of a projector is so big in many ways but the projector cannot become a barrier to success. They must be bright, portable, easy to set up and use for any environment. The flexible DLP technology enables a compact design coupled with brightness and image quality. Lightweight and easy to take on the road, some portable projectors with DLP technology weigh less than 1 pound!

Looking for a hand-held projector?

DLP Pico technology is the perfect solution. Today, the educators face a new challenge – holding the attention of technically savvy students, who live in a media-on-demand, high definition world. Choosing an education projector with DLP technology brings lessons to life with precise color, superb readability, and long-lasting image quality. The alldigital DLP chip offers high reliability, enabling teachers to do what they do best – inspire their students to learn.

The latest DLP chipset is smart enough to transmit from any popular device including a computer. Since 2009, the DLP brands have been shipping 3D projectors in almost all of their product lines offering many options and supporting various popular resolutions. Discover the teaching advantages of 3D in the classroom – engage students and improve test scores. Make your classroom projector smart… choose DLP SmartSource 3D and prepare for the next trend in teaching.

Outstanding readability

The DLP projectors make lessons exceptionally easy to read – even from the back row – due to its high fill factor of up to 96 % and high native contrast ratio. The color quality looks like real life. BrilliantColor technology, available in many projectors with DLP technology, offers multi-colour processing creating rich and vibrant colors. BrilliantColor technology improves efficiencies in the illumination optics and provides a wider colour gamut, capable of creating over one billion color shades. When you purchase a projector or any other piece of equipment, it all crashes down to the lifetime cost of ownership. In addition to looking at the initial price, you have to factor in the maintenance costs – like filter cleanings and replacements – and how long the projector will last. Depending upon the particular circumstance, the projectors with DLP technology can offer low maintenance costs, which will save your money.

IWB Vs Interactive projector

Main difference between the Interactive Projector systems and the conventional “smart” boards lies with the board. With an Interactive Projector system (like Epson Brightlink and SMART Lightraise), the actual writing surface is the wall (or whatever surface is projected upon).

The Interactive Projectors replace the actual board with electronic pens or styluses that send wireless signals to the projector. The projector, in turn, receives and sends those signals to the computer, usually via USB cable.

Actually removing another piece of hardware – the physical “board” from the mix has several advantages. First, the ability to remove a piece of hardware, especially one as significant as a touch-sensitive electronic whiteboard, while maintaining the same functionality, is always a good thing. Taking the actual board out of the picture eliminates concerns about the board-PC connectivity, orienting, dead spots, etc. It also eliminates the requirement to find a suitable place for, and mount the physical board. With an Interactive Projector, any firm surface that can be projected upon can be used for the writing surface.

In some classrooms, the interactive whiteboards have replaced traditional whiteboards or flipcharts, or the video/ media systems such as a DVD player and a TV combination. Even where the traditional boards are used, the IWB often supplements them by connecting to a school network digital video distribution system. In other cases, the IWBs interact with online shared annotation and drawing environments such as interactive vector based graphical websites.

The brief instructional blocks can be recorded for review by the students — they will see the exact presentation that occurred in the classroom with the teacher’s audio input.

A visual tour of the historical events through the internet fires one’s imagination. Equipped with DLP technology, the classroom projectors are fast becoming the musthave learning tools to help increase retention, maintain interest and improve the learning experience.

This can help transform learning and instruction. Many companies and projects now focus on creating supplemental instructional materials, specifically designed for interactive whiteboards. Electrokite out of Boston, MA, for example, will have the first complete curriculum for schools and districts.

One recent use of the IWB is in shared reading lessons. Mimic books, for instance, allow teachers to project children’s books onto the interactive whiteboard with book-like interactivity. Dixons City Academy in the North of England was the first non-college or university learning environment to make use of interactive whiteboards after the school’s then principal Sir John Lewis showed a keen interest in the developing technology. An interactive whiteboard can now be found in every classroom of the school.

TI DLP technology can enable the world’s smallest projectors under 8 ounces and light up the largest movie screens up to 100 feet. The engineers have begun medical research to inset DLP technology into the human eye as a retina replacement. There is no stopping where DLP technology will go next!

The IT professionals today are trying to cope with the diminishing budget and the skeleton staff. The challenging environment has led to the adoption of cloud technologies in education as an easy attractive option. Elets News Network takes a look at the cloud solutions.

With cloud becoming an important tool in the education sector, the market of cloud seems to be growing with a CAGR of 19.9% every year. The barriers to cloud adoption will gradually reduce with passage of time and education industry can leverage business advantage with this new technology.

The education sector is one of the most demanding sectors of all, especially with the tremendous growth after the adoption of new age teaching methods. The higher education sector has seen massive growth spurring the demand for automation of education sector at all levels in order to cater to the needs of the industry.

With the burst of technologies in the education sector, the stakeholders expect correct information fast, accurate, anytime and anywhere. Cloud computing has been well accepted within the industry with a positive outlook.

Sameer Bora, EVP, Research and Marketing, Chalk and Talk feels that the schools today have realized the importance of learning. The cloud computing brings out the best in the world. Bora adds that there is a lot of scope for education sector in imparting good quality education with the adoption of new cloud solutions specifically designed for the education sector.

Responding quickly to the students’ demands, the IT professionals today are trying to cope with the diminishing budget and the skeleton staff strength. The challenging environment has led to the adoption of cloud technologies in education as an easy attractive option.

The Cisco cloud solutions are designed in such a way as caters to the need of the schools and the colleges at par. The Cisco cloud for education combines Cisco Unified Data center, Cisco Cloud Intelligent Network, and Cisco Cloud services into an integrated architecture that helps the educators deliver highly secure, cloud-based services.

The benefits of using Cisco Cloud services for education include:

• Redefining teaching by extending interactive multimedia learning environments to anyone, anywhere
• Expediting delivery of administrative services
• Simplifying operations, saving time and cutting cost
• Reducing risk and reinforcing the security

Cisco has host of cloud solutions and services specific to every school and university. Building, deploying cloud networks, offering cloud services, or consuming applications from partner hosted cloud networks becomes easier.

Chalk and Talk, one of the solution providers of cloud solutions, has launched head modo, a cloud based solution for schools, to meet the requirement. The solution is customized according to the needs and requirements of the institutions or schools.

Manoj Davey, Co-founder and Head Engineer, Cherrypick Technologies has developed Cherrypick Box, a cloud based solution, that helps the schools and the colleges use in-house apps for any work like sharing calendars etc, which are common requirements. “There should be a mechanism to allow the pioneering teachers, students, to work on cloud, putting mass learning and so on so forth,” feels Davey.

“No doubt, the cloud solutions facilitate communication and collaboration among the learners but learning can be accepted if group of learners interact with themselves which can be possible through cloud. Collaborations can make a big difference across the traditional boundaries,” explains Udai Singh, President, Global Technology Strategy, NIIT Ltd.

“One of the advantages of deploying Cloud Solution is that people don’t require any infrastructure. They can travel anywhere, can be based in any location and access the information from anywhere. They can also access it from e mail, reduce the size of IT team. In the education space, cloud is very good but how education industry embraces this technology is more important. It is a very good business opportunity for the vendors or solution providers,” feels Rohit Aggarwal, CEO Koenig Solutions.

The market for education cloud computing is fast gaining the traction and the key players like IBM, Adobe, Cisco, Huawei Technologies, EMC, NetApp, NEC, Salesforce. com are growing fast. According to the markets and the surveys, total education cloud computing market is likely to grow from $5.05 billion to $12.38 billion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate of (CAGR) 19.9%.

Today what is required is a fundamental shift in the thinking of the end user about cloud technology before it has a chance to really benefit the schools. Technology vendors and solution providers must work to reposition IT within the mindset of the professionals working in the education sector. Singh opines, “There are two-three key points when we look at the number of potential students we have whether from schools or colleges. The total base of users is huge but the consumption is small. So to increase the consumption we need good infrastructure to support the learning which takes certain amount of time. Cloud solutions allow you to scale up and down based on actual use or consumption.”

Market Size

The market for education cloud computing is fast gaining the traction and the key players like IBM, Adobe, Cisco, Huawei Technologies, EMC, NetApp, NEC, Salesforce.com are growing fast. According to the markets and survey of the markets, total education cloud computing market is likely to grow from $5.05 billion to $12.38 billion by 2019 at a compound annual growth rate of (CAGR) 19.9%.

The education cloud computing market brings along innovative outcomes for K-12 and higher education. The market faces challenges in the form of compliances and slow advancement of technology among the buyers.

PWC India has proposed a 12.3% increase of budget for education with bigger thrust on schools and higher education. INR 100 crore has been budgeted to establish and start the virtual classrooms by leveraging technology for larger benefit of the population residing in the far flung areas. However, the increased spending needs to be accompanied by higher penetration of education in the remote villages.

The expected market size for the Indian education sector in FY 2015 is INR 602,410 crore from INR 341,180 crore in FY 2012. At present, higher education system comprises of about 700 universities and over 35,000 colleges.

According to Rohit Aggarwal of Koeing Solutions, the cloud services market can be categorized into three categories based on the type of service offered:

• SaaS (Software as a Service)
• IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
• PaaS (Platform as a Service)

Of all three, SaaS is expected to grow the fastest, followed by IaaS. The market for SaaS can be further differentiated into: Cloud Security, Mobile SaaS Cloud offerings and Corporate & SMB SaaS Cloud services. The global cloud software services (SaaS) market is currently valued close to $ 22 billion and is expected to grow to $ 50.8 billion by 2018.

Adoption Rate

Despite a fast growing market, adoption of the technology ceases to be minimal. The IT departments or the IT advisers must educate the head teachers by demonstrating the tangible and pecuniary benefits of IT to the school system not only from a budgetary standpoint but also the way it improves the educational experience for the students, the teachers and the parents.

The expected market size for the Indian education sector in FY 2015 is INR 602,410 crore against INR 341,180 crore in FY 2012. At present, higher education system comprises of about 700 universities and over 35,000 colleges.

As Sameer puts in, adoption of fullfledged cloud technology in schools today is between 5,000 and 10,000 among the private schools. Rest of the schools from the government and the public sectors must understand the benefits they accrue from the adoption. However, Sameer thinks that the adoption rate of cloud services will increase at school level in next 5 years. At the K-12 level the cloud technology adoption varies between 3% and 5% which is expected to grow to 10% in next 3 years.

Expressing agreement with Sameer, Davey also sees minimal adoption of cloud technology at the school level and feels that the market for cloud services will likely to evolve in next 5 years. Yogesh Agarwal, CEO, Applane feels that the adoption is less in the sector as they fear for the loss of sensitive data. The adopters have to change their mindset to embrace the technology and work in sync with the advancements. So there is a need to educate the institutes about the security of the data.

CV Raman, Practice lead and Solution architect education ‘school on cloud’ platform, Xchanging, gives a very interesting fact while talking about the adoption at the metro and tier 2-3 level cities.

He says, “We have cloud solutions for K-12 and higher secondary and we are deploying the solutions pan India. Today Punjab is providing education to secondary and higher secondary level and we are talking to both the sectors for the usage of cloud. Almost 3,000 to 4,000 schools have adopted the cloud solutions. Besides, we are also running a lot of projects in the metro cities but the size of adoption among the institutions is fairly high in the non-metro cities. They are growing in size and technology.”

Benefits of adopting Cloud technology

To gain benefits of adopting new cloud technology are listed as under

• A standard content delivery is ensured through a central location through multiple remote virtual classrooms.
• The students and the teachers can collaborate and study
• Cloud technologies ensure rapid access to infrastructure services, thereby rendering agility in rolling out newer products
• The teachers and the staff can focus on the core functions of the institution instead of looking at IT infrastructure and the application set up.

Applane deploys ERP solutions

The ERP solutions deployed at Universal Education Group helped the college streamline the education delivery mechanism through automation.

Profile

Universal Education is the fastest growing education enterprise in India and one of the largest private education groups in Western India. Today Universal Institutions are some of foremost schools and colleges in Mumbai, with strong links to academia, industry and the society. They have top rate study, social and sporting facilities.

Challenge

Universal Group wanted Applane for automating their processes with an easy to use management console to switch between functional applications with minimum downtime. Universal Education Group wanted all of its ten colleges to be managed individually from college premises and the group management to be able to setup, view and revise the policies for each school centrally. Also consolidated reports for all colleges were required to understand growth of the group. This called for a solution which had to be location agnostic, c ould be configured at college level, role based, secure, scalable and accessible at all colleges simultaneously.

Apart from these requirements, each college is different in terms of study pattern and in some cases in term of the curriculum colleges follow. So the system had to support a single organization with multiple colleges as its branches while ensuring smooth functioning of the individual colleges with better coordination, transparency & clarity.

Solution

Applane Education is made up of 16 seamlessly integrated modules and 5 comprehensive dashboards. Applane implemented the ERP simultaneously in all the colleges of Universal Education Group and provided dashboards that could be used to administer all the colleges. Applane configur ed all colleges under one organization using the concept of profit centers.

Each college was set up as an individual profit center so that the data is managed separately. Applane by default is a role based system so separate roles were available to principal, professors, librarians, fee managers, and other college staff. This makes sure that the data of a college is seen by the staff of that colleg e only and also the data being viewed is as per role.

For example, Transport Manager cannot see exam evaluation data for any student of his/her college. New roles were configured on management level, so that the individual and cumulative r eports of colleges can be viewed centrally. These included financial, academic and administrative reports. Also workflows were developed so that automatic alerts can be configured centrally. Similarly email and SMS functionality can be managed centrally. The complete system was redesigned from scratch considering the problems faced by a chain of schools.

List of modules implemented

Admission Management, Student Information Management, Student Attendance Management, Student Health Management, Examination & Evaluation Management, Time Table Management, Fee & Collection Management Transport management, Library Management, Hostel Management, HR Management, Asset & Expense Management Finance Management, Alumni Management, Lesson Planning, Inventory Management, Technologies used, Memcache API to boost performance by providing temporary, high-speed data access through a high-performance memory cache Task queues to run certain complex operations in the background, improving complex and lengthy process like report generation process responsive for users, Users API to provide SSO and multiple alternative login option via OpenID login which provides a seamless experience to access the applications, Images Java API to perform image optimization before saving in database like Student profile images etc., Blobstore API to efficiently store student documents and images, Cloud SQL for scalable data storage, Google Cloud Storage for saving database backup snapshots

Business impact

Implementation of Applane Education in the 10 colleges under the administration of Universal Education group led to streamlining of the education delivery mechanism through automation. Also, considerable cost savings and decrease of upto 20% TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) was observed. Through the admission module, the admission process was simplified across the colleges. The result generation module made it possible for Universal to gener ate results for all its students in very short time and with minimal errors.

After the successful integration of Applane, the Universal Educational Group is managing their all college data in a very smooth and efficient way and that too with pr oper access rights so that the data is not mismanaged or lost. Some users have complete access and some having access of particular branch or branches only.

Cultural Challenges

Though the cloud technology has improved for us to see the benefits, yet there are cultural challenges facing an academic environment. There is a huge gap in the strategic vision and understanding of available technology versus budgets available to deliver on that vision. In India the teacher and the student ratio is 1:12 so the whole concept of virtual classrooms, MOOCs is a massive challenge.

Today most of the cloud services do not have a track record on which to build the necessary trust to shift existing services without compelling benefits.

The course, curriculum in most of the institutes is not regularly updated. Reach of quality education in the villages continues to be a big challenge to overcome. Lack of internet connectivity in such areas is a huge bottleneck.

Increasing cost of infrastructure and the cumbersome task of switching from one cloud to another is a roadblock.

Teachers and institutions have not been technology savvy hence the adoption of new modes of teaching is slow.

Architecture of cloud services

The cloud enables education sector to focus on its core activities, ensure smooth operation and improve the quality of teaching course content. But, on which application or infrastructure, the education industry should develop their cloud solution is a challenge. NIIT cloud campus-pioneer in using cloud technology believes in developing the cloud structure on SaaS (Software as a Service) model which is easy to operate and understand.

The institutions have also options of leveraging PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) based offerings too without any need to invest in procurement and maintenance of infrastructure. The SaaS is a top layer and a model of software deployment where a provider approves of an application to customers for use as a service.

PaaS offerings can be customized around a particular area like content management or its offerings can provide for every phase of software development and testing.

The technology has brought many changes to education. One of those changes is the ability to record lectures and class activities, digitally “capturing” them. Doing so allows the lectures and activities to be archived and reviewed later on by students and staff.

Why Capture?

Lecture (and activity) capture serves a number of purposes for educators:

• Allows students to replay complex material, viewing as often as needed and on a variety of devices.
• Allows students to take courses held in overlapping time slots.
• Increases student engagement by placing more power in the student’s hands and freeing them to listen more carefully instead of frantically taking notes.
• Allows instructors save their lectures for unlimited archiving, use, and reuse.
• Extends instructors’ reach to new markets, letting them generate additional revenue without hiring or retaining adjuncts or additional staff to create and manage new courses.

While lecture capture is considered new and high tech, it’s not brand new. A study conducted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008 examined student preferences regarding captured lectures. Close to 30,000 students were surveyed, and 82% of them preferred a course with recorded content.

Why? Because a course with captured lectures allows them to:

• Easily catch up on class
• Watch lectures whenever they feel the need
• Score higher on tests

The Stanford School of Medicine found in a similar survey that student retention improved up to 78% in cases where lectures were captured, and made available online for review. Almost 76% of the students in this survey cited improvement in their exam scores when lectures were captured, and 60% expressed a willingness to pay extra fees in order to access captured lectures.

Yet another study, this time from Coppin State University in Baltimore, revealed an improvement in retention rates from 71% to 86% when lectures were captured. The authors of this study explained:

“Coppin students tapped into the network of archived lectures 2.5 million times. They’re using the lectures as a pre-exam refresher and a fallback for less-than-perfect notes. After all, memory has its limits.”

Of course, not everyone is convinced. Some worry that making recordings available will cause students to abandon lectures all together. Others are concerned that sensitive course material will get into “the wrong hands.”

The paper “Capturing lectures: No Brainer or Sticky Wicket?” addresses the issue pretty thoroughly, raising important points and asking solid questions. It’s worth a read for anyone grappling with these issues when it comes to their organization, institution, or courses.

WizIQ Lecture Capture

Lecture capture software is expensive, far out of reach of independent teachers and trainers. That is, unless you use WizIQ’s virtual classroom. This built-in feature allows any instructor to capture their lectures as they happen and then reuse, archive, and share the recording with anyone through just a link.

Anyone from an independent tutor to an entire university, can enhance their students’ learning with WizIQ:

• Capture your audio and video of presentations and other class activities and let the students review whenever they want.
• Pause or resume recording at will. Once the session is complete, the recording automatically gets included in your course or class page.
• Provide public access to some recordings as a promotional tool, in order to attract new students.
• Integrate the WizIQ Virtual Classroom and recording access with your existing Moodle, Sakai, Joomla, eFront, Drupal, or WordPress or Blackboard LearnTM Building Block installation to provide single-click access to recordings.
• Automatically post recordings to internal class websites so they can be accessed at anytime, from anywhere.
• Avoid lots of training, downloads, and extra costs with our affordable, user-friendly tools.
• Teach classes in a live stream, with your recordings automatically archived and quickly available for viewing afterward.

So what are you waiting for? Widen your reach and create your very own knowledge database. Capture, stream, archive and share!

This article post first published on WizIQ.com: http://go.wiziq.com/2w4a

To know more on how to capture lecture in easy online/offline approach, mail: academics@wiziq.com, or speak to Kalyan @ +91-9915-701-494

The entrepreneurs from across the diverse sectors analysed the current industry trends, charting the way forward for the next generation. Entrepreneurship summits can help a budding entrepreneur wear a new mantle. The Elets News Network tracks the traits of an entrepreneur.

Empowering the industries and segments through diffusion of the critical business knowledge is important for the skilled entrepreneurs to take the industry to a level, not seen before.

JP Malhotra, (MD, Bhartiya Valves) thinks aloud that a summit serves an entrepreneur an opportunity to learn the tricks of trade.

The entrepreneurs from across the diverse sectors analysed the current industry trends, charting the way forward for the next generation. The summits can help a budding entrepreneur wear a new mantle.

Malhotra strongly feels that entrepreneurship should be part of curriculum for one to become a good entrepreneur. He adds further in the same refrain, “I feel that an entrepreneur should be a subject of study which has to be formally learnt. For an ordinary person wanting to be an entrepreneur, education has to be formalised and the case studies should be followed by formal lecturing.”

Entrepreneurship is an interdisciplinary program serving the students many opportunities to learn the ropes. By offering several means to put into practice the theory and practical knowledge, the subject serves to complement the student’s major area of study. JP Malhotra himself is an example. He left his job after 20 years and moved on to work as an entrepreneur. Though he was taken aback during the initial stage of his business, yet he moved on with his experience and knowledge while attending the seminars on entrepreneurship which had helped him grow his company.

Likewise, he wishes that a would-be entrepreneur should know the subject well enough at university level. Breaking out of the 9-5 environment, today’s youth wants to be a job creator instead of a job seeker. In order to graduate to a successful entrepreneur, strong business background can help secure financial support. However, the qualifications varied from business to business, the subjects of study being different.

A successful entrepreneur needs several skills. One must have a tolerance threshold for taking the risks and showing willingness to leave the security of a routine job. Ability to multi-tasking is a key, especially in the beginning of an enterprise, where an entrepreneur may need to function as a book keeper, customer service agent and marketing expert.

Mahesh Gupta, Chairman, Kent RO Systems Ltd feels, “To be a successful entrepreneur it is essential to know many laws, need to know many actions which you need to take, and it is good to know that before they trouble you. I think there can be a course which can be planned to learn all the techniques. The basic concept of being an entrepreneur and developing an idea into a business has to come from you.”

While studying entrepreneurship, one should focus on how an entrepreneur thinks and decides. One can also learn how the enterprises compete for customers in the national and international markets, how they form strategies, how they organise their activities and operations to grow into successful and profitable businesses. Innovation and entrepreneurship strongly complement the students completing their bachelor courses. Master of commerce and MBA are also the areas of study that helps prepare a good entrepreneur.

Theoretical education includes MBA, Communication, Accounting, Business law, Marketing, Computer Science and IT, Economics, Psychology, Entrepreneurship where as practical education includes Competitions, Hands-on experience, Internships, Research and projects.

To start your company, it is essential to know the do’s and don’ts.

Do’s

There are many entrepreneurs who get involved in industries about which they do not know anything. There are several advantages of starting a business in an industry with which you are already familiar: you will have a better understanding of your customers’ needs, you will be more familiar with the competitive landscape and you will be able to speak more intelligently about your vision to employees, customers, investors, and other key stakeholders.

• For the start-ups, there is a need to know lot more things while running the business but that only comes through the experience and the practical knowledge. Do not hesitate to ask for help when in doubt or trouble. Whether you seek help internally or externally, people will respect the fact that you are aware of the limits of your knowledge and are actively seeking to enhance your understanding of a problem.
• Entrepreneurship can be tiresome with full of setbacks and disappointments. The best defence against discouragement is to have a strong sense of purpose. Make sure that your purpose of starting the business is clear to yourself and that they provide the meaning and motivation you need to get your business off the ground.
• The human beings are all equally prone to mistakes, especially the optimist entrepreneurs who get through the hard times. However, ignoring the mistake and allowing it to fester can cost the company dear, so one should have the courage to admit when you are wrong and when it is time to change course.

Don’ts

• Do not expect to achieve success overnight. Entrepreneurship is a marathon. Even if you have the vision, plan, team and capital in place, the challenges will spring from the most unexpected quarters. Whichever way one goes to make the business a success, the key is to stay focussed on the long term vision and do not waver from your determination.
• While you may have a very powerful idea to take your business forward, the chances are that somebody may have tried it earlier and failed terribly. But this should not deter your spirit. Instead of dismissing these companies, you should strive to learn everything about them and try to find out the causes of failure. This will help the new entrants not to commit the same mistakes.
• Do not assume that money will solve the problems of business. A perfect strategy with a clear vision is what is required first to push the business and reach goals. Of course, capital is important for any business but it needs to be used in right way. The best use of the investment funds is to adopt a model that has been proven to work.
• From the investors’ point of view, it is all about getting as big of a return on an investment and as quickly as possible. Building a lasting company requires calibrated approach, so it is not necessary to follow the investors’ approach of spending more on the portfolio of the company, so that the investors can hustle along to a quick and profitable exit.
• If you are through for a long haul so beware of moneymen and their unquenchable thirst for the shortterm gains. It is your company that grows on your own terms.