WeSchool announces the launch of Wenture.inv, a one of its kind initiative to promote alumni entrepreneurs
Mumbai : S.P. Mandali’s Prin. L. N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research (WeSchool) announced the launch of Wenture.inv 2022. The unique initiative was aimed to promote alumni entrepreneurs (AEs) by helping them in the expansion of their start-ups. It was hosted at the WeSchool campus and was inaugurated by Adv. Shri S.K. Jain – Chairman, Managing Council, S. P. Mandali and Local Managing Committee, WeSchool and Prof. Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, WeSchool.
The event commenced with an exhibition of the offerings of alumni entrepreneurs (AEs), who had seen considerable growth and further wished to scale their businesses by raising funds. This was followed by a pitching session in presence of notable investors like Dr. Farzan Ghadially, Senator India, World Business Angels Investment Forum, Mr. Sandesh Kirkire, Ex CEO, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management, Mr. Dipesh Mohile, Managing Partner, IIA Ventures, Chintan Oza, Founder, Anantam Ecosystems, among others. The shortlisted entrepreneurs then had one-to-one sessions with the interested investors to explore further possibilities.
Ahead of the event, WeSchool arranged for a 14 hour online Boot-camp where sessions were delivered from seasoned start-up mentors and investors who guided the entrepreneurs to make an impactful pitch. These sessions helped the alumni entrepreneurs to refine their pitches before the Pitch Day. The alumni cohort included entrepreneurs from the Edtech, Agritech and Food processing sector who were given assignments to redefining their start-up’s business model, develop prudent cashflow sheets, valuation sheet, P&L statement. These assignments were evaluated by the investors and finally 6 start-ups were shortlisted out of 10 for the final event.
On this occasion Prof Dr. Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, WeSchool said, “India has witnessed a massive 15,400% rise in start-ups in last 6 years, as per recent Government data. This is in line with our vision of helping our students, past and present, develop an entrepreneurial mind-set and contribute to the start-up ecosystem. We want WeSchool to be a place where our students can have life-long mentorship support. The Wenture.inv initiative is a first of its kind incubation program by an institution where alumni entrepreneurs are not only guided and mentored but also given a platform to scale their enterprises. I am extremely humbled to witness such great companies being developed by our past students and will be supporting them in every way possible to make ramp up their business.”
Speaking about the initiative, Mr. Sameer Joshi, Founding Partner, Sam & Andy said, “Wenture.inv is a great initiative started by WeSchool. It displays their care for their alumni and how they are encouraging entrepreneurship even after their journey at WeSchool has concluded. This is a very unique initiative which many big management institutions are missing today. All the participants had an entrepreneurial instinct in them and Wenture.inv has helped in bringing such talents to the forefront. I wish the best to the students and hope we can keep this spark in the coming years.”
The event also had an exhibition stall for the current students of WeSchool who had created prototypes on problem statements given by TCS- Digital Impact Square. These were evaluated by the delegates of the company. This platform helped students in developing their capability of thinking unconventionally to be effective global leaders.