Dylan Lubbe

Location / Country: Ahmedabad, India
Organization: Centre for Innovation, Incubation, & Entrepreneurship

LUBBE: "In the summer of 2017, I joined the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship as a Strategy Associate. Working vigorously under four initiatives, I gained vast exposure to many startups, industries, ideas and entrepreneurs.”

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Centre for Innovation, Incubation, & Entrepreneurship

“The Indian Institute of Management’s (IIM) Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) helps entrepreneurs turn ideas into viable businesses by incubating, accelerating, mentoring and funding innovative start-ups. CIIE believes that entrepreneurship can bring about disruptive change through ventures across impact areas like energy, environment, agriculture, healthcare and affordable technology.”

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Impact:

The India Innovation Growth Programme (IIGP)

“Under this program, selected startups and entrepreneurs were hosted by CIIE and took part in a week long, intense lecture series held by IIM professors. In addition, entrepreneurs would participate in concentrated sessions with CIIE mentors to discuss their businesses and ideas. On behalf of CIIE I advised and mentored at least eight entrepreneurs and startups under the programme. During these sessions, we discussed the challenges faced by these startups, identified growth opportunities and critiqued the business viability and models of the businesses.”

IIMAvericks Initiative

“This program is dedicated to helping graduating MBA students of IIM focus on their business ideas and sustain themselves during the first two-year period of starting up.

I worked particularly closely with two members under this initiative. First Nahulan Pranav, who wants to bypass the traditional method of purchasing fruits and vegetables in India by creating an express delivery service.“

Innovation City

“Innocity” is an on-demand and a customized startup support platform designed by CIIE. Through CIIE, Innocity enables aspiring entrepreneurs to get customized guidance, support and services from relevant professionals, mentors, startup founders, angels and other startup service providers.

Under this initiative, I delivered presentations on Customer Development to Innocity attendees. I took entrepreneurs through various frameworks and tools such as the Business Canvas Model, Lean Model Process, the concept of Minimum Viable Products and the Lean Start Up process to help them validate and refine their ideas and early stage startups.”

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Conclusion

“My experience at CIIE was remarkable and one that I will never forget. Not only have I gained valuable experience, quality learning and an acquisition of many new skills, my work was rewarding and energizing. I really felt that I added value to those with whom I worked with which was a great takeaway.”

Nathaniel Rosenblum

Country: Rwanda
Organization: African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC), Inkomoko

Nathaniel spent the summer working for Inkomoko, a business acceleratory run by the African Entrepreneur Collective (AEC) based in Kigali, Rwanda. AEC through Inkomoko works with hundreds of entrepreneurs in Rwanda to help them move from start up to fully‐fledged business. They are not specialized in a particular field, and rather reflect the growth spaces of the Rwandan economy

Nathaniel: “the most important accomplishment of my time in Rwanda has to do with refocusing my career interest. I am now much more aware of the challenges of financing development in agriculture through the private sector. These challenges are not insurmountable, rather without a concerted effort to deal with them they will continue to hamper ambitious and deserving entrepreneurs. In whatever my next steps are I plan on addressing those problems thanks to this summer’s glimpse into the Rwandan agribusiness landscape.”

Katie Halleran

Country: Cambodia

Organization: Development Innovations

Katie Halleran worked at Development Innovations in Cambodia, and immersed herself int he world of Phnom Penh startups, hub, hackerspaces, design thinking groups, and co-working spaces in order to get to know the landscape. She also took part in providing content and editing for the first and second rounds of an internal DAI competition on innovative projects.

Katie: “I was fortunate to alongside the talented people on the ground at DI; one of my colleagues, a Khmer Rouge survivor who escaped at the Thai border camps at 6 years old, had just finished a documentary on rediscovering the camp where over 20,000 were said to have died, and reconnecting with childhood friends with whom he had fled the camp.”

Anna Valeria

Country: Lima

Organization: Endeavor Brasil / Andean Innovation Red

Anna Valeria joined Andean Innovation Red (AIR) early in the organization’s development. She acted as an advisor, identifying the purpose of every company activity to determine relevance to key objectives. Her main objective was to build a map of the entrepreneurial landscape in Lima. She interviewed entrepreneurs, investors, acelerators and university officials involved in fostering entrepreneurship. As a result AIR attracted for the first time the attention of the community by using a new technological platform (i.e. Google Hangouts) that allowed to reach more audience and to create a virtual platform where entrepreneurs and soon-to-be entrepreneurs can share ideas.

Anna: “Today I feel more prepared and confident that I have been gathering the needed tools, both in terms of the academic work and now during the summer with hands-on experience to start building my own startup with social impact.”

Hannah Schiff

Country: India
Organization: Start Up! India

Hannah Schiff’s work included in-person interviews with villagers, experts in the field, and other social entrepreneurs as well as exposure to a wide variety of social enterprise models. She gained experience helping social enterprises define smart business strategies and processes and created questionnaires, guides and other content for Start Up! India’s Incubation Tool Kit.

Hannah : “This was a powerful internship through which I gained many insights that will be useful in my academic and career decisions going forward. The experience helped me to refine my idea of what I am looking for in a future work environment.”