The Apprentice

At Shiprocket our vision is to democratise ecommerce & deliver delightful experiences to everyone. Our kids summer camp, 'The Apprentice' boldly extends this vision to creating a democratic industry/workplace of the future by inculcating a spirit of entrepreneurship in children. The purpose of this program is to ignite young minds to think step-change & create social impact through job creation, economic inclusion & building new categories of business/industries while solving real-world problems for the 'common man'.It also hopes to satisfy their curiosity & build an appreciation for their parents' life's work.

We did this successfully in the microcosm of our office last week by meaningfully engaging with 40 children, from 8 to 13 years' old during their schools' summer break. The agenda of the program was to deliver exciting learning experiences in the first half with fun activities post lunch. Mid level functional leaders curated content & facilitated sessions armed with presentations, audio visuals, team activities & games whereas a healthy yet fun snack/meals menu kept energy levels high throughout the day.

On Day 1, we started with an ice breaker that introduced the group to each other & friendships quickly formed across age levels. The session on 'People' helped children in gaining a knack of identifying rockstar talent, building an 'A Team', collaborating for breakthroughs & collectively aspiring for more. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, truly. This was followed by a workshop on 'Building A Powerful Brand Logo' where they learnt what makes a unique brand & what sets it apart from also-rans.

Day 2 was about running a mock warehouse,'From Click To Doorstep', to understand the fulfilment process, receiving & organising inventory, picking & packing with barcode scanner et all, stowing efficiently for future use, while Day 3 covered "High Impact Sales', entailing selling skills & growing margins by earning customer trust, delivery high quality products/services & making the right promises. Day 4 had the children learn computer programming in the session 'We Are Coders' & use code blocks to program dancing characters on code.org & in the session on basic robotics, the little ones were thrilled to make micro roombas. On the final day, the class on business fundamentals, 'World Of Business' built know how on raising capital, driving profitability & satisfying needs.

In the second half through the week, the children watched movies, 'Matilda' & 'Vivo', enjoyed games of magic show, tug o' war & balloon pop, learnt pottery, sand art, built a world of imagination with slime, zumba & clock painting.The grand finale included the kids making presentations to senior leadership, receiving certificates of program completion, celebrating by cake-cutting & bidding their final goodbyes with a goodie bag.

The children left office with messages of love & gratitude on the comment board, lots of happy pictures, requests for more engagements in the future & overall a spring in their step. Many had an 'aha' moment when they realised they could push beyond 'service roles' & build a business as doctors, lawyers, educators, sports-people & even banana sellers! Their minds brimmed with ideas of what they could be & what they could do.This was a moment of truth & a spark was lit.

During this period, the energy, resourcefulness, teamwork & innovation the children exhibited was phenomenal & if this group is reflective of the population, we are convinced the future of our country is in the right hands. Our only lookout is to nurture these young minds as they go on their journey of exploration & building themselves.

#BuildingBharat