“The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important and important type of learning through experience, seeing something with our own eyes.”
While going through the busy days at Hel(L), the opportunity to apply the concepts learnt in the class came by our way in a not so customary manner. The one unique thing about IIM Lucknow is that it supports and provides a chance to operate student-run ventures. While the mess itself is run by students, the outlets on the outside, the parlour on campus and basic requirements of students are all met by these businesses.
The procedure to apply for the license to run these ventures takes place in March. It is done via English style Bidding and the top 3 teams to qualify the first round of the bid to go on to present the full year’s business plan in absolute detail. The presentation for the plans is judged by faculty from different streams. The bid amount needs to be paid by the winning teams to finally receive the license to run the entity for that particular academic year. The students need to recover this amount by the normal profits generated in the year to break even.
After the 2 rounds, the venture is finally awarded to the winning team. There are currently 5 student-run ventures on campus, namely – Gossip & Bite, Not Just Tea, In Your Reach, Head2Toe, and Click n Pick run by teams of different sizes.
The first 3 of these ventures deal in food & beverages, Head2Toe is the campus parlour and Click n Pick deals with all the other things that you may need to survive on campus. These are run for a period of 9-10 months from March mid to Feb mid excluding the two months of internship for normal profit. The following 3 articles will detail out ventures from each of these categories.
The employees at these ventures, the promotional offers, offerings and prices are also decided by students themselves and revised basis feedback received from the 2 batches. There are regular feedbacks taken for improvisation of the offerings and the prices and offerings are also regulated by the approval of the student council.
All in all, it is a great learning experience for those who wish to and gets a chance to run these ventures. To deal with suppliers and officially apply the concepts and operations management. To deal with students and provide attractive sales promotions by applying the concepts from marketing sessions is all in all a brilliant way to reinforce the learning even further.
Not only do the students running these ventures benefit from these, it most definitely makes the lives of all of the others students extremely easy. Especially since the IIM Lucknow campus on the outskirts of the city, having these basic facilities on campus makes things much easier for one and all. There are also other shops on campus run by external vendors that these ventures compete with, thus making it an even better experience all in all.