How a 45 seconds talk spawned a prestigious business opportunity - A valuable experience

Today, I am sharing an interesting conversation that happened in an Education Summit in November 2015. This was my first paid conference and I was highly excited.

As I reached the venue 1 hour ahead, I used this extra time to familiarize myself with the venue, agenda of the day and the people attending (delegates, panelists & speakers). I also got time to interact with the event organizers. Being comfortable, soon I proceeded to greet and meet the incoming delegates. Did small talks with most of them about myself and Buddy4Study. Few of them got interested and we exchanged business cards to be connected afterwards.

With a habit of mine to make notes of panel discussions, sessions and my small talks with delegates, I instantly felt myself as a part of this community. Where everyone was talking about education, its challenges, solutions and companies who are working on the space. I came to know about so many good initiatives, new people and startups working on solving education challenges. Many Delegates gave encouraging feedback for Buddy4Study & shown interest to connect in near future. Whole day, I was enthusiastically sharing about my scholarship work done so far and future strategy in a concise/crisp manner.

During one panel discussion on the topic “Transforming the way India learns”, I came to know about Michael & Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF) and their work in improving quality education for under-served students of India. Post discussion, I quickly approached Prachi Windlass Ma’am (Director, MSDF) and shared about my Buddy4Study initiative & its scholarship models in 40-45 seconds. She listened to me (even when there were at least 25-30 people waiting to speak to her) and provided her email id to write her back.

I wrote an email very next day, with Buddy4Study intro and its scholarship vision. I received a response the same day with a meeting time. Fast forward 1 year, we signed an agreement with MSDF, where they are funding a very unique kind of project called “Student2Scholar (S2S)”. First time, Buddy4Study was taking responsibility to mobilize, profile and provide scholarship awareness and application support to 30000 students of Delhi NCR & Haryana states. The objective was to help students to apply for eligible available government and non-government scholarships with a target to create at least 3000 scholars. We delivered the project with more than 6000 students as beneficiaries. This project success helped us to form a new scholarship product as our revenue source. We pitched this S2S product to many corporations and foundations and onboarded many of them as our clients.

This whole opportunity for us and for many of our young deserving students would not have started, if we had not 45 second conversation in that event.

Bonus: Many times, a startup founder misses to see the opportunities coming from unknown directions. As entrepreneurs, we have to identify and create opportunities. Sharing a framework for all such entrepreneurs, who are starting up and meeting lots of people as strangers. Many of them would be your future investors, customers, co-founders, team heads or your well wishers/introducers. How you should pitch about your idea and engage with them to create new opportunities for yourself. Download Framework