The Cuckoo Club in Mumbai is known for stand-up comedy performances and experimental plays. On Friday, it was the venue for an one of its kind workshop by InsideIIM.com called the Konversations Cafe where 100 students who have admits from India's top 15 Business schools spent time with 4 of India's dream recruiters.
Keeping with the spirit of the place and the freedom of InsideIIM's platform, the tone of the day long event was extremely informal and fun. Candidates were allowed to ask anything they wanted, with no filters. No planting of questions. No forced attendance. No compulsion to sit for any session. And we had a packed house!
About 40% of the attendees travelled from outside Mumbai. 100 students from across India came for this workshop voluntarily - there were students from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat. InsideIIM is proud to have facilitated this session successfully for 2 candidates from the specially abled category despite the small venue. The team made every effort possible to ensure that they could also make the most out of the session.
Apart from the sessions by the companies, the event had a stand-up comedy act by an in-house wannabe comic, food during every break, two audience dances, a live online quiz, Magnum Ice-cream and incessant questions by the audience!
After a small informal introduction by InsideIIM's Creator - Ankit Doshi, the first session began which was by DBS. Himanshu from DBS made the session fun by keeping it light and full of laughter. The floor was then thrown open for Q and A between DBS management trainees and the audience.
Vodafone took over the stage in the second session and Harjot from Vodafone introduced the world of Vodafone to the audience. He spoke about the scale of Vodafone and the career graph of Vodafone management trainees. Again, the current young Vodafone managers engaged in a Q & A with the crowd.
The post lunch session saw Unilever's Kedar Lele enthral the audience. He spoke about his life journey which resonated with most students. Naresh, Area Sales Manager of South Branch also spoke about his role and work at Unilever. A live online interactive quiz was followed by a enthusiastic Q&A session. The session ended with a Magnum Ice-cream for everyone in the audience!
The last session saw speakers from Reliance Industries engage the students with the story of Dhirubhai Ambani, the scale of Reliance's businesses - Petrochemicals, Retail and of course JIO! The team started off with an interesting quiz and managed a no-holds barred Q & A with the students before signing off.
Ankit closed the day by thanking everyone who had come and spoke about the new courses (on konversations.com) and activities planned during the year for the InsideIIM community. Feedback forms were collected and certificates were issued to every participant. One of the other highlights of the day for all participants were the free goodies distributed by HUL and Reliance Industries. Some students also won goodies from Vodafone and DBS by participating actively in the discussions!