An extremely significant goal of holistic business education for students, is to enable them meet with business leaders who have made an impact in a specific field. Interacting with such leaders helps kindle confidence and entrepreneurship among students. Sharing of first-hand experiences also helps students understand unavoidable business challenges and ways to go about those. Keeping this in mind, Entrepreneurship and Management Processes International (EMPI Business School, New Delhi) recently welcomed Mr. Alan Mamedi – co-founder and global CEO of Truecaller.
The aim was to facilitate a two-way interaction between Alan and students of EMPI. Interactions such as these foster a spirit of entrepreneurship in young students. Learning from experiences of business leaders, students are able to understand various aspects of marketing and customer orientation.
Alan shared the journey of Truecaller and its subsequent evolution as a result of relationship established with its customers. Processes at Truecaller have a community-based model and hence all data is obtained via communities and not from mobile networks. The model has worked for the company since their focus has always been not just on innovation, but also on core values like fostering trust, customer satisfaction and taking responsibility for company decisions. Going by these principles the brand was able to witness 10,000 downloads in their very first week of launch. Today Truecaller has more than 45 million users globally. The company has received funding from top silicon valley giants like Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins (investors in Google).
Alan advised students at EMPI to never give up. The goal he said, was to be the best at whatever one did; be it a small task at hand or a large piece of work that requires days to complete. Mr. Manan Shah, who is the Director Marketing (India), at Truecaller, and an alumnus of EMPI Business School accompanied Alan around the campus. Truecaller showed inclination towards absorbing EMPI students into internship programs run by the company and in making them Truecaller Ambassadors.
This interactive session was organized by the EMPI SUV (Start-Up Venture) Lab. This lab is a unique initiative of EMPI Business School which aims at fostering an entrepreneurial environment in the school. EMPI SUV encourages students to brainstorm new business ideas and to fearlessly communicate the same in the market. In addition to start-up talks, EMPI SUV (Start-Up Venture) Lab has also been involved in organizing entrepreneurial hackathons at national level. The institute also promotes a culture of “innovating futures” which has been its vision since its inception, 22 years ago.