Introduction

Glocal International Teen Conference (GITC) is an opportunity for teenagers to address the issues and overcome the challenges that they have faced in their daily lives. It is a platform for all the teenagers from age 13 to 19 to learn, empower and bring social impact through a participatory and interactive environment with their peers from all over the globe. The three key issues of GITC are Entrepreneurship, Empowerment, and Socio-Perspective. It is a lifetime experience to connect with the influencing teenager and act for a positive change. This Year, Glocal International Teen Conference was organized virtually on Dec 10 & 11. 

Speaker and Moderator of Entrepreneurship Panel

Mr. Joseph Silvanus, Managing Director, Dolma Consulting moderated the panel discussion and interacted with three different panelists from India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The panelists were: Mr. Kunal Chandiramani, Young Innovator from India and Finalist of Glocal Teen Hero India 2019; Mr. Sanzad Hossain, Young Innovator from Bangladesh, and Mr. Samir Phuyal, Emerging Entrepreneur from Nepal and Winner of Wai Wai Glocal Teen Hero Nepal 2019.

The Entrepreneurship Panel discussion highlighted the individual ideas, experience sharing and a holistic view on entrepreneurship; along with its variable. The panel discussion also motivated fellow teenagers especially guided to be more creative and nurture their entrepreneurship thinking. 

Here is the gist of the beautiful panel discussion:

Moderator: Can you please share with us about your journey and the things that have made a difference in your life?

Kunal: So that’s a lovely note to start with. When we talk about entrepreneurs, we talk about so many factors involved in it. One of the most integral things is that recently we are hiring for a new venture and we try to hire people with an entrepreneur mindset because it becomes a more important part of the view as you enroll. In the context of India or the entire part of the world is very known for this term called ‘jugaad’ and ‘frugal innovation’. Entrepreneurship is so correlated to frugal innovation. 

Entrepreneurship is a mindset that takes your time and it’s a mindset of going ahead and taking out some cash or growing it. That will be a conventional wisdom entrepreneur that came back from centuries and adding towards its ethics, society and civilization. Likewise, Social Entrepreneur is entrepreneurship connected at a heap. About going ahead and doing well for society and profiting in the background. 

Talking about my journey; it was being extremely subtle and I tend to speak more than I allocated. So my journey started a few years back when I started “kStar” as a side project. I have an interest in coding and decided to create this. I was amazed that I was able to create myself. 

Today, KStar sellers cross across to 100,1000 customers, and we work to connect them to the global international market and slowly expanding across the middle east. And we have connected to this market and sell the products on a national scale. So that’s exactly what KStar does.

Moderator: So, how did you manage to find the sponsor for your initiation?

Kunal: It has two ideas. So, firstly, the thing is that all those struggles which I will be discussing whichever is the shortest they can figure it out. The best is a struggle when you look back and those are the moments you remember. Because when you look back at the hardest moments, you try re-experiencing and thinking of yourself in those moments you realize that it was so much fun.

So, especially on the finance side, like today, money is a big taboo in our society. We build up so many ideas on capital. Internet business or any form of business requires certain capital.

I did have a lot of emotional backing from my family. Firstly, and Second is financial backing. So, in the context when we started and have a capital of 15 to 20,000 in seed investment, which is a pretty minimum for KStar. Last year, we were getting an acquisition of over 2 million US and starting with about 50,000 Indian. When you have to convince someone to believe in your idea, you convince someone to believe in something that has no assets except your idea. In my context, capital is required for me, I had financial backing from my family.

Likewise, the first thing is you don’t need to worry about yourself. The second is, most of you have access to the internet. So these are two forms of capital. Capital is not just money, it’s a resource. And the third form of capital is money to invest. 

Hussain: Thank you glocal for giving me such an amazing opportunity to present myself and back in 2017, I applied to the Glocal International Teen Conference as a participant. After three years, I am here talking as a speaker and it is a great opportunity for me and great to evolve, actually. I am very excited to share my ideas with all of you. It’s quite interesting how I turned my robotic project into an environmental project to help people and countries in the waste management sector. 

We all know that Bangladesh is quite behind in processing waste management. It is because our people are not aware of throwing our waste in particular places, and it happens everywhere in South Asia countries. So, in my research, I mostly research people’s psychology- which includes unmanaged wastes and the reasons that people are not managing their dust particles in their home. 

We always think about our materialistic output. Everything we do, we try to find the output. What I really found from my research is that people actually don’t try to put the dust in the dustbin or the right places because people think about the profit to throw dust in the dustbin. So, through research; I really tried to pull out my robotics project as I am really interested in robotics. 

In the past 4 years, I have been working on several electronics projects and robots to make society a better place to live in. Thus, I had an idea to help people and to make a better waste management system for our society and country. So, I have made a Humanoid Robot with the help of my friends and other people which helps them to put their waste in the proper place. I have initiated my project ideas on a very small scale. The Robot has the following features like; Whenever someone comes in front of my robot; the robot will ask people to put dust in the dustbin. If you put dust in the robot dustbin, it will give chocolate as a reward. 

It was my primary idea for the environment where later I tried to collaborate with Dhaka City Corporation, which works and manages the waste of our country. So I went to different companies to sponsor ourselves and even pitched my idea to different places as well. Luckily, we were awarded as top 10 Social Entrepreneurship ideas on the national ICT Award which was a very prestigious competition in Bangladesh. So, This is my journey to How I started collaborating my robotics project to a project which helps people. 

Meanwhile, all I want to say is to start a business you don’t need a lot of money. You need a very interesting idea which really helps people and which will really make an impact on society. So I started my project on the way that helps people to make society a better place.

Moderator: How will you take your project to a larger scale?

Hussain: I have faced this question a lot when I pitched my idea in front of leaders and other people. They mostly asked the question is; How can a robot be placed in a local area in the real-world?

So I’m working to make this physical idea to be implemented in a real-world situation. We are taking a lot of suggestions as I mentioned earlier; we are trying to make a robot into a car so that it can be implemented, feasible or dual projects in our society. Because there are lots of obstacles to placing robots in the real world. There have been many unfortunate things so we are currently working on that and we are trying to interest people more and more to make it a habit. So in the future, we don’t need to reward this act as it is a social responsibility. So, this is my idea and I am actively working on it to implement in my society to make a green world and a sustainable environment.

Moderator: Can you share your story – Samir?

Samir: I am really grateful to Glocal for providing me with an opportunity to share my ideas and experiences on the platform of Glocal International Teen Conference. 

My journey began when our school introduced a computer subject in our class. I was really fascinated by the idea that we could input anything like software, apps with the help of technology and programming. So, at that time a lot of people used to use software like Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Word; I was really curious about how one could make such software? And when I asked this question to my teacher; he answered the programming. From that time, I was very fascinated by the idea of being able to build anything from technology. Slowly and gradually, I started learning different computer programming. I was able to explore the world of programming and coding and started learning and practising through the internet. Through the Internet, I was able to learn different programming languages through tutorials. I believe that the best way to learn is to build the things that you have learned. I have learned to build websites, mobile applications, web development and many more. I also got to understand the importance of the Internet. Ever since I was exposed to the world of coding, I have been passionate about it. After learning how to code, I taught myself programming languages which are crucial for every tech enthusiast. 

So I started asking several business organizations in my locality to give me a project to build a website for them and it was really hard to convince them. During my journey I have learned to provide that; we have to establish ourselves as experts in that field. 

Later; I started to grow an online business site; where I taught and made programming courses and uploaded them on Udemy and Skillshare. I have successfully created an advertising platform called ‘Naya Kinmel’, a platform that digitalizes advertisements and connects buyers and sellers making their shopping experience easier. I am also running the ‘HamroTech’ YouTube channel and started teaching programming tutorials in Nepali. Through that, I got several clients and projects and I also started an IT Company. 

Recently, I have made an app called ‘Mero karobar Nepali Khata’ to help them to record their khata on mobile.

Moderator: Who are your collaborators on your initiation?

Samir: Yes, there are a lot of people who have helped me on my journey. Currently, We are building a new app called ‘Mero Karobar Nepali khata’ which is a solution to keep khata on mobile. It helps to build a system for stores. Meanwhile, I have also made a team for the project. In my perspective, a team is a balanced set of individuals who come together in a single form. 

Rapid Fire Round

Mental inspiration or physical burden to being lifted. What is your particular preferred method?

Hussain: I think for mental inspiration or some health for your mental inspiration or to remove your depression or physical obstacles you need to talk to your friends and other people who can support you. I definitely support that we should talk to our family and I think it really helps.

Kunal: Early morning meditation. So, I had an emotional rough patch a few months back, and I discovered meditation and it was a gem after that.

How do you balance between academic and professional life?

Hussain: It’s really tough, and I personally faced this problem while I was working on my extracurricular activities and then again balancing my project. Also, I have made a perfect schedule, and it has helped a lot.

Samir: I don’t need A+. I just studied enough so that I get an average grade. I devoted all the time to the things I loved to do. 

Wealth, Knowledge or Recognition; Which one you prefer?

Everyone: Knowledge.

If you had to reinvent the magic again, what would you do differently now?

Kunal: Be ready to be vulnerable from the start.

Hossain: Yah, same as Kunal. I really support his idea.

Moderator: Such a great session; You all have shared some of your intimate concerns and worries. And that’s most important. We can all celebrate successes, but behind every success, there’s also some trauma and fear. Thank you for sharing your perspectives and the wonderful talk.

Conclusion

The entrepreneurship panel discussion provided the opportunity to hear wonderful insights and ideas from the inspirational teenagers for sharing their journey and entrepreneurial stories on the platform of the Glocal International Teen Conference 2020.