Ms. MANSI BARANWAL – Founder IGNITE, Director & Entrepreneur in Residence, BAIN & Co. – bestowed some great learning experiences in a live webinar session on the topic “AN ENTREPRENEUR’S SKILLSET” BBA/BCA/B.Com students & aspirants of Asian School of Business (ASB) on Friday, 14th May 2021 from 12:00 pm onwards under its “LEAD Lecture Series 2021: Season 6”. As it progressed, the webinar turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for students and young entrepreneurs to listen and learn from an expert who has contributed tremendously in entrepreneurship development!
A director and resident entrepreneur based in New Delhi, Ms. Mansi Baranwal leads IGNITE, a Baincubator startup and thriving online program, which trains leaders to deliver results from transformations and change programs. Previously, Ms. Mansi served as a senior manager with Bain & Company. Her seven years of consulting experience have provided, in particular, a deep understanding of the consumer products industry. She has advised several billion-dollar companies across India, SEA and Africa on growth, customer experience, performance improvement, go-to-market acceleration, and marketing effectiveness.
Ms. Mansi Baranwal is a certified executive coach who has also led multiple social sector engagements both in and outside of Bain. Besides, she is also a co-founder of the Headstart Network Foundation, one of India’s largest grassroots-level organizations which support entrepreneurship and startups. Prior to joining Bain, Ms. Mansi was a senior software developer at Yahoo. She holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
An initiative of Asian Education Group (AEG)– considered as the largest centre for professional media, IT, law, management, fashion & hospitality education in Asia with world-class facilities – this webinar was organized by Asian School of Business (ASB) ) –which is a constituent group college of Asian Education Group and is ranked as the top private BBA/BCA/B.Com colleges in Delhi NCR – for all BBA, BCA& B.Com students& aspirants. Since this webinar was a closed session, students were required to register for the same. The webinar was followed by a lively Q&A Session with the distinguished guest.
The live session began with a welcome note, followed by a brief introduction of the distinguished guest by Ms. Garima Malhotra on behalf of the AEG family. Beginning her talk, Ms. Mansi Baranwal first of all expressed her grateful thanks to Ms. Garima Malhotra for the “long introduction” about her and said, “I am an entrepreneur no doubt, but more than that I am an optimist who believes in making things possible.”
Thereafter, Ms. Mansi Baranwal got on straight to the topic of the day, viz. “AN ENTREPRENEUR’S SKILLSET” and began her talk by way of a PPT presentation that included on-spot polls for the participants. Deliberating upon the important role of entrepreneurs, she said, “Entrepreneurs continue to change the face of the economies worldwide, but entrepreneurship is not restricted to founders anymore. It is now more inclusive and comprehensive and is guided by digital transformation, innovation and training needs.” Speaking specifically about “SKILLSETS”, she stated that “the entrepreneurial skill set is essential to success in any role and it can be bifurcated as ‘Hard Skills’ and ‘Soft Skills’.” She then enumerated ‘Hard Skills’ as consisting of Market analysis, Strategic thinking, Finance basics, Sales & Marketing, Project management/multitasking, Test & learn/agile innovation, and Technology/coding basics. Talking about ‘Soft Skills’, she listed them as Ownership, Getting things done from nothing, People skills (like empathy/listening for consumers, charisma for team and investors, etc.), High bar on quality, Resilience/discipline, and Adaptability/Continuous learning.
Then, Ms. Mansi Baranwal opened the session for questions from the participants. A number of questions were put up by the students, most of which were related to the various aspects of entrepreneurship. To each of these questions, the distinguished speaker provided the most convincing answers.
As she drew to the end of her session, in her message for the ASB students aspiring to fulfill their entrepreneurial ambitions, the distinguished guest Ms. Mansi Baranwal said, “Don’t indulge in life seriously. Don’t try things for the sake of trying. Don’t try to over-engineer things. Try doing things and learn from things and one day you will know exactly what you want to do. Take up things that give you joy and learn to live life not so seriously!”
As a token of gratitude, Ms. Mansi Baranwal was presented with a glittering “Memento” on behalf of Asian Education Group, which was most appreciated by the distinguished guest.
Following this, the enlightening session with this much-regarded “Entrepreneurial Expert”, Ms. MANSI BARANWAL – Founder IGNITE, Director & Entrepreneur in Residence, BAIN & Co. – came to a solemn end!