Business plan writing guest lecture 05.09.14(1)
1 like137 views
Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta, a business planning consultant, gave a guest lecture on how to write a successful business plan. He emphasized the importance of rigorous research, relevance, and planning from conception to commissioning. Gupta stressed that a good business plan requires candidates to define a value proposition for their product or service and conduct significant research to logically present their concept in a coherent form that proves its credibility. The discussion covered a variety of topics related to business models, marketing strategies, and frameworks like Porter's Five Forces that can help analyze opportunities.
Business plan writing guest lecture 05.09.14(1)
- 1. From Conception to Commissioning: How to write a business plan 5th September, 2014 On Friday 5th September, Teachers Day, what started off as a simple guest lecture turned into something much bigger. With an instantaneously likeable personality, the sharp and suave Mr. Amit Gupta made us feel right at home. Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta, Business Planning Consultant and Founding Executive Director, Callidus Training & Consulting Pvt. Ltd., strongly believes that if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Hence, he highlighted that a scalable, sustainable and feasible business model integrates all functional areas and conceptual learning. A sound business solution requires theoretical knowledge to be practically applied in unison with certain good practices. To assess and evaluate assumptions while consolidating and hunting down opportunities, Mr. Amit Gupta stressed the three Rs for success- Rigour, Research and Relevance. A consultant and expert on Business Plans, Proposals and Start ups, Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta got straight to the point and spoke of why he was here. From planning and controlling to measuring milestones, he emphasized the importance of content and form in a business plan. Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta aimed at nurturing, motivating and mentoring our entrepreneurial ideas and eventually helping us articulate them from conception to commissioning to the point where investors come into the picture. Using the analogy of a journey through the Black Forest in Germany, he helped us understand the significance of the journey we were going to embark upon. He asked the right questions to stimulate our thinking process and to understand our educational background, and whether we planned on being entrepreneurs or not and how the idea we had chosen for our Capstone Project came into existence. In a nutshell, Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta reiterated that a business plan requires each candidate making an informed choice to create, define and deliver a certain value proposition that complements the product or service offering. Also required is a phenomenal amount of research, application and synthesis of the business concept into a logical coherent and cogent form that would be accepted by individuals other than the three Fs (Friends, Fools and Fathers in law) thereby proof of giving credibility, dependability and reliability to the business. Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta ventured into the yin and yang of writing a successful business plan and spoke of the need to reconcile the short and long term decision making processes and operations with quarterly targets and reviews while keeping stakeholders happy and engaging the market competition. Vital in business is also the sustainability buzzword and the trade-off between the product/service on one hand and technology applied on the other. We discussed the business models of companies like EBay, Google, Microsoft, Apple and Dell. The discussion touched upon a variety of topics ranging from personalisation, customisation and co-creation to various forms of advertising and marketing strategies in internet based businesses. Using various academic frameworks and theories like Competitive Profile Matrix, SWOT Analysis, Porters Diamond Model, Balanced Scorecard Approach, PESTLE to understand the content of opportunity, Porters Five Forces and the stickiness of the consumer in terms of value or price sensitivity, Mr. Amit Gupta helped us open our minds to the possibility of many a thing. To end the session, Ms. Rosa Homburg, Academic Programme Manager of the Indo German Training Centre presented Prof (Dr) Amit Gupta with a souvenir and made the vote of thanks. A group photograph brought the exciting afternoon session to a close.