In case you were wondering what work I actually do here, pay close attention! Over the past couple of months, I’ve been on a team here at CIIE working to set up the foundation and events for Global Entrepreneurship Week in India, serving as the event partnership coordinator. It’s involved calling and emailing any and everyone in India who runs events focused on entrepreneurship and getting them to join with us by holding their events under the banner of GEW.
I’m excited to say that after the late nights and stressful times, GEW is just one day away! India is still relatively new to the game when talking about entrepreneurship and is miles behind the startup culture we have in Silicon Valley, but I’ve been encouraged with some of the response we’ve received so far. This country just has a LOT of people and there are bound to be countless entrepreneurs amongst them. Sometimes we leave out the small fruit vendor or the restaurant owner when we talk about entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurship is alive and well wherever you look. What lags behind in India is the culture and structure around these enterprising individuals that can help people express their ideas and push them to the next level.
GEW isn’t exactly what I came to India to do, but it’s opened my eyes to the role of ecosystem development and the sheer power of people sharing common goals. I had a chance during my last trip to Delhi to sit in on a meeting where grassroot leaders of the entrepreneurship community sat down together on the rooftop of a coworking space and discussed ways they could hold a series of events to train a new generation of leaders for their entrepreneur communities. While there may be some commercial benefit as well, ultimately these guys were giving up their free time because they believed in a goal and wanted to see what they could do as active members in their communities to make it come to life. Just a couple weeks later, their efforts attracted the attention of a large government-affiliated organization, who has offered full support of their events and is helping to grow it to new levels.
While GEW may not be a solution to the gap in the system, I’m excited to see what ends up coming out of it. Funding, useful connections, empowerment, corporate buy-in…these are all things that I can say that at the end of the day I was able to support and help actualize. If you want to find out more about GEW, I would encourage you to check out the GEW Global page or the GEW India page to see what we’ve been up to. Next time I’ll post about some of the awesome events that happened throughout the week!