The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Indus region. There are currently 13,000 members, including over 2,500 charter members in 57 chapters across 14 countries. TiE’s mission is to foster entrepreneurship globally through mentoring, networking, and education. Dedicated to the virtuous cycle of wealth creation and giving back to the community, TiE’s focus is on generating and nurturing our next generation of entrepreneurs.

As a part of their monthly event and activity, TiE Kolkata organizes regular seminar on “Celebrating Entrepreneurship” – to inculcate and foster the spirit of entrepreneurship in the community. This month’s program happened on 9th December at ICCR, Kolkata featuring “My Story Session” by Mr. Saumen Chakraborty, MD & CEO, Intellisys Technologies and “Entrepreneurial story of One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)” a unique social entrepreneurship initiative) by Mr. Satish Jha, Chairman, OLPC India Foundation and Mr. Rodrigo Arboleda, Chairman of OLPC Association.

Mr. Saumen Chakraborty dwelled upon that being from a Bengali family background; it was quite difficult for him to get into his own venture as there were many obstacles. However he felt that he had the confidence to dream and dream big, so decided to plunge into it. He also gave a detail about his company and his dream product “Vennfer”. The unique software based videoconferencing product "Vennfer" is creating waves with features that ushers in the future of videoconferencing.

OLPC (originally a group at the Media Lab of MIT, now an independent organization) proposed to design a low cost laptop intended for use by children in developing nations. The laptop is poised to empower and educate children through the use of technology, and connect the world's next generation of thinkers.

The main challenge for Mr. Satish Jha, Chairman, OLPC India Foundation was how to convert simple villages to global villages from that time when he conceived one laptop per one child idea. OLPC gave 40 to 45 laptops to only the girl child in the village for their education with internet connection.

According to Mr. Rodrigo Arboleda, Chairman of OLPC Association(Global head), the mission of this non-profit association (One Laptop Per Child) is to develop a low-cost laptop - the "$100 Laptop" - a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children. Their goal is to provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment, and express themselves. The first notebook model, the OLPC XO, has started to be rolled out to the first third-world countries in November 2007.

It was quite an absorbing session with such renowned speakers and we look forward to more sessions like this in future for immense learning.

Anindita Halder
Ennovation
MBA 2011-13