An eight-day long 'Virtual Training Program' organised by Dhaka University Entrepreneurship Development Club (DUEDC) and presented by BRAC Bank commenced on December 17, 2020, with the title "Shut Up and Start-Up." The event focused on sharpening the necessary skills to be an entrepreneur and inspiring young individuals to make their marks in the start-up industry. The training programme comprises two phases; the first being 'Entrepreneurs Training' which continued from December 17 to 24, followed by an 'Online Pitching Competition' on December 30.
In this event, DUEDC basically focused on eight most important aspects of a young entrepreneur like- ideation and idea validation, team building, pitching and art of storytelling, partnership building hacks, marketing and logistics, customer development and MVP, fundraising and legal issues. The courses were facilitated by experts including Dr Rafiuddin Ahmed, associate professor at marketing department of DU, Quazi M Ahmed, founder and CEO at BOLD, Iqbal Bahar Zahid, CEO at Optimax Communication Ltd, Shazeeb M Khairul Islam, founder of YY Ventures, Tajdin Hassan, head of marketing at Daily Star, Abul Khair Mohamad Hafizullah Khan, project director at ESDP, BIDA and Khundkar Hasan Shahriyar, advocate at Supreme Court of Bangladesh.
Each of the sessions was followed by an FAQ segment where instructors responded to the queries of the participants. On December 30, an online pitching competition was held where the participants utilised their learnings from the first phase of the training session and tried to impress investors and top entrepreneurial minds of the country with the art of storytelling. The top team Slumdog Broke Gals was awarded Tk 10,000. Team Last Picks and team Super Moringa Powder took home Tk 8,000 and 5,000 respectively being the first and second runner-up. A special award of Tk 5,000, sponsored by 'Tara,' went to the best female group team Golapi Jilapi to encourage female participation in the start-up industry.
The closing ceremony was conducted by the Club Moderator Dr Rafiuddin in presence of the Chairman of BSEC Dr Shibli Rubayet Islam, the founder of SKV venture Sonia Bashir Kabir and Head of SME Banking of BRAC Bank Ltd Sayed Abdul Momen. They shared their valuable thoughts about entrepreneurship and encouraged young masterminds by providing the right direction.
In a discussion with Mahtab Abdullah Monjur, the president of DUEDC stated, "In order to match the first world, youths have no alternative to entrepreneurship. Hence, DUEDC arranged this online training session for enthusiastic entrepreneurs and was ecstatic by the response of many participants."
The writer is a freshman at the Department of Economics, University of Dhaka.
She can be reached at [email protected]
