Gujarat: Management students get out of classes, visit traders to get business tips

Enterprising city students, refusing to restrict their learning to within the four walls of a classroom, have reached out to different trading communities to get tips on better entrepreneurship. Jains, Marwaris, Sindhis, Cheliyas, Bohras, Khojas, Parsis, Purohits and Memons are among the communities they have approached.

The youth, first-year students from the Amrut Mody School of Management, studied the city's old markets, Sunday market and flower market. They also studied the different trading communities to exchange theories and best practices with them as part of a course titled 'Entrepreneurship with practice'.

Professor Abrar Ali Saiyed, who designed the course, said, "The idea was to expose students to different aspects of entrepreneurship through experiential learning."

"The students learnt that entrepreneurship exists in different contexts, and benefits and challenges are all different for each of them. As an introductory course, it also gave them exposure and helped them understand what the entrepreneurs go through. All of this would help them prepare for life."

Sharing his experience, Karan Trivedi, who was part of the group that analysed the Memon community, said, "Initially, it was very challenging to get them to speak with us, as they were very hesitant. But what we observed was that they believed in honesty and integrity no matter what. We also found that while they uplift each other, they do not allow outsiders in their business."

Moreover, the students also learnt about theories like effactuation, ecology, network and resource-based views by visiting these entrepreneurs and interacting and observing them.

From the Sindhi community, for instance, the greatest takeaway was to not hesitant while taking up any task, or to never let a customer go away dissatisfied. From the Jains, they learnt to patiently work on continuing family businesses. From the Khojas, the students learnt to think about others and to think as managers.

Interestingly, the students also learnt about the Cheliyas, a community that's part of Islam who don't believe in the concept of interest. To get around this, they reinvest their savings back into their business, which helps the community flourish and gives them an opportunity to earn better.

"It was a unique experience since all communities work on different theories. As part of the course, we studied industrial cluster and even created a product on our campus and sold it at the Sunday market. The task was to design a product from 10 items collected from college campus in 20 minutes, scale up business, and maintain a stall at the old city market. We had to do everything ourselves, including booking the space, selling our product, dealing with the cops, etc.," Karan added.