As students of BBA in KASBIT University, we attended many seminars and programmes
As students of BBA in KASBIT University, we attended many seminars and programmes, and most of them were boring. However, in one of our subjects, Entrepreneurship, we were introduced to a company programme of INjaz Pakistan by Aman Foundation - a programme that changed the lives of some ordinary students. Our class was distributed into two groups and given a task by the volunteers of the company: to translate an innovative idea into a viable business and carry this business into the ground realities of business World. Each team contained 15 members. Our team was not doing well with the task initially. Wecould not even decide what product or service to launch till the 4th week of the company programme. Then, one of our volunteers of Injaz told us: “Guys, don’t give up, because entrepreneurs are never good at initial stage, they start from a very small idea and then rise up.”
From then onwards, our team started working with immense motivation. Our business idea was of customizing gift items for those people who are tired of giving similar products to their loved ones on special occasions and events. We named our Company ‘Giftobus’ and this bus just kept on moving on and on. We studied how market research is done for introducing a product in the market and how a business goes through, from the point of execution to the point of liquidation. Finally, out of those two teams, the team Giftobus won and then went to a national competition held by Amman Foundation to represent this business idea. In that competition, each team had to compete with other universities of Karachi and represent their overall experience with Injaz Pakistan, on behalf of which investors like Anees Hussain had to fund the business proposal of the winning team. MashaAllah our efforts were rewarded and we won that competition!. As the winning team not only got funds by investors, but also got a huge sponsorship for going to Muscat, Oman, and compete there at an international competition called: “Injaz Al Arab Young Entrepreneurship Competition 2015” with teams of 13 other countries! It was a great honor as Pakistan was participating first time in such an international competition and we were the team that was going to represent Pakistan there. So, with the help of Injaz Pakistan Team and our university, KASBIT, we started preparing.
KASBIT, Aman Foundation and Injaz Pakistan supported us all the way whether it was about counseling, or about the marketing strategies of our products, or about our communication skills. Finally it was time! We went to Oman where we stayed for the next four days of the competition. Our team did a great job, represented its business idea with a lot of enthusiasm and competed at every level of the competition amazingly. Our team was appreciated by the judges for the way we represented our country over there. Unfortunately, we could not win because it was a very tough competition and other teams had strong business ideas, but we did not lose hope and we considered it our victory because we were the team in the entire Pakistan that got the opportunity to reach this competition.
Our objective was also to change the negative image in the minds of people out there, and with that we had a lot of success. The competition was a big platform for us, as will be for other university teams in the future. We hope that we entrepreneurs of Pakistan today become an inspiration for the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
