School Name: School of Management Studies & IIC REVA University Number of Students: 50
Date: 07-02-2020

     Conducting guest lectures has been a regular practice to provide experiences of actual interaction with experts from the industry and entrepreneurs. With this motive, School of Management Studies & IIC REVA University organized a Guest lecture on the 7th of Feb, Friday, 2020 for BBA Entrepreneurship students in C.K. Prahalad Seminar Hall of Swami Vivekananda Block. The guest lecture was delivered by an expert in the field of entrepreneurship, educator and entrepreneur generator, Prof. Raghunandan N. K. The topic of the guest lecture was- “New venture creation and business opportunity identification for millennial entrepreneurs”. Prof. Raghunandan is associated with NEN, National Entrepreneurship Network of the Wadhwani Foundation in Bangalore. Around 50 BBA-entrepreneurship students attended the guest lecture.

The 3 hours session conducted by Mr. RAGHUNANDAN NK from NEN, oriented the students on the entrepreneurial competencies, need for entrepreneurship, the purpose of taking up entrepreneurship and opportunities that can be taken up by these entrepreneurs.

Profile of Prof. Raghunandan N.K.-

Mr. RAGUNANDAN NK is a result-oriented and visionary professional with 22 years of corporate / industry experience in customer relations, entrepreneurship in education domain, consultancy in strategic management and marketing, mentoring of startups and academia experience. He is a proven expert in Entrepreneurship Educator with National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) – Wadhwani Foundation. He has been working in Surana Post Graduate College as Associate Professor and associated with few Education, HR Management, Eco Management Initiatives as well. Mr. Raghunandan is pursuing Ph.D. in “Strategic Management & Marketing in Entrepreneurship” from Dayananda Sagar University and has a keen interest in the areas of Entrepreneurship and Ethics, Strategic Management and Execution, Strategic Marketing Management, Human Resource Management, Negotiation and Conflict Management, Strategic Alliances and Alliance Networks. He is an effective communicator with proven interpersonal skills, a great speaker and proven excellence in working towards upliftment of the academic standards by motivating personnel and students. He is also involved in Admission enrollment, Counselling, Placement, Consulting, and Incubation initiatives with a clear intention, focus and commitment to work on building the organization.

Mr. RAGUNANDAN NK spoke about how could everyone identify problems that are existing around us as opportunities and how could one find solution to it. He invoked in students the keenness to find opportunities in problems and the need to take the risk of taking the first step into new venture creation. He also motivated the students to change the mindset and perception that we have about starting a new venture.

He emphasized the need to eliminate the fear of failure and have confidence in oneself to determine what one is supposed to do. He mentioned about the various problems or challenges in entrepreneurship and new venture creation, and stated that that funding is not at all a problem as numerous agencies, angel investors, corpus funds, target accelerators are available today who are always ready to fund innovative ideas. It is only confidence that one should have in order to take the first step towards entrepreneurship. He emphasized on developing the confidence in oneself to have dreams and eventually make their dreams come true without letting it die.


Before concluding, he mentioned that one should be able to answer three questions:

     1) Who I am?
     2) What I know?
     3) Who else I know?

Prof. Raghunandan focused on self-introspection and self-awareness in order to identify the right opportunity and invest on it. He re-iterated that it is absolutely fine if a person does not have complete knowledge but one should be able to find a right person for a particular task. Then he mentioned that it’s important to think divergently and out of the box, talk, express and open up about the idea one has regarding any issues or problems. The resource person identified many new business opportunities that can be taken up by present generation youth and students. He highlighted the need to start entrepreneurial ventures from the campus itself in the form of small ventures and then either selling it to the upcoming batch or handing it over to the junior batch who can take care of the business operations. Mr. Raghunandan’s inspiring words were instrumental in motivating the students towards entrepreneurship and around 15 out of them stood up with the zeal to start up a venture. He promised support and mentoring to all those who were ready to start off with their ideas and become an entrepreneur.

It has been a great opportunity to learn from the inspiring words and experiences of Prof. Raghunandan
N.K. We are very grateful to Dr. Shubha A, Director of School of Management Studies for providing us the facilities and support for conducting such guest lectures and Dr. S.K. Prasad for connecting us to the resource person. The guest lecture has been coordinated by Dr. Nitu Ghosh and supported by student coordinators of BBA- Entrepreneurship -IV sem.