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Kanara Entrepreneurs (KE) holds its Members Meeting for the month of August 2021 – Meeting Report

The Bi-Monthly Members Meeting of Kanara Entrepreneurs was held on Friday, 20^th August 2021, through an online platform. The meeting commenced sharp at 7: 00 PM IST, where a short introduction was given by Keroline Martis, followed by a KE prayer recited by Reshma Saldanha.

A moment was taken to pay tribute to the deceased after which the meeting commenced with a speech by KE President – Clarence Pereira who welcomed the members to the Bi-Monthly Meeting. India’s big win at the Olympics 2021, was a very proud moment for the country. Clarence expressed how there was not much difference between an athlete and an entrepreneur and brought out 6 main similarities of the same. Success requires dedication; extra effort and time must be put in by each individual to succeed and stand out from the rest. Accept failure; failure is nothing if not a stepping stone to success, the key is to learn from it. Winning requires a team; each and every person plays an important role in the success of a business no maybe how small the job role. Engage with your supporters; entrepreneurs rely on their vendors like athletes rely on the support of their fans, learning and engaging with supporters shows where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Competition is always good; it acts as a motivator and builds better businesses by keeping up with trends. Practice; there is always something new which can be learnt, to keep up with trends one must keep learning and up skilling themselves.

After the President`s Welcome, Ms. Vilina Sequeira – Member of Mentoring Committee, was called upon to give a brief understanding about the Membeship committee and its offerings. The members of this committee, headed by Ms. Leena Lobo under guidance of the KE President consist of a group of volunteers whose main purpose is to help KE members achieve their goals by offering support and guidance, especially when ‘the going gets tough’.

The scope of their work extends from Business Strategy Planning to Career Counselling. To get in touch with the committee, members can drop a mail to directormentoring.blr@keglobal.org or mentoring.blr@keglobal.org, after which an analysis will be conducted on the report, and Mentoring will be provided free of cost for a period of not more than 15 hours, after which Mentoring is provided, but on a chargeable basis.

Post the brief overview given by Ms. Vilina Sequeira, business pitches were made by three KE Members:

Mr. Anoop Sequeira – The founder of Currylicious, an entrepreneur who has been associated with the hospitality and food industry for over three decades. He is also a Business Consultant, Certified Trainer and Life Coach (last 8 years) and offers his services in the areas of Business and Franchise Consulting, Corporate Training, Executive Coaching and Facilitation. Companies such as Licious, Reliance Retail, Coca Cola and Manyavar are few of his clientele. Those of who are interested in getting personally coached to improve your business, can get in touch with Anoop, who can be contacted at +919845011157 or anoop@anoopsequeira.com.

Mr. Shine Arackal – A graduate and electrical engineer who started his business 5 years ago. His company is into three different verticals and is a channel partner for Drainvac Canada; A company into central vacuum system, A Distributor for Renson Belgium; for the entire range of their products like 

Mr. Arun Sequeira – COO of Pilgrim Stays, has over 25 years of experience in sales and marketing and has worked with Times of India and Radio 1 and has in turn, lead several teams to success. Pilgrim Stays, a joint venture between ATC Publishing and Trip Villas, is a company which aspires to create Spiritual experiences through global Christian travel. Their offerings are focused on providing the fullest experience in terms of Culture, Heritage and the Art of Christian pilgrimage. A few of the current tours offered by Pilgrim Stays include trips to Historical Goa, Captivating Kochi and the Holy Land. Reach out to Arun at +919845034545. 

Following the business pitches, a panel discussion was conducted by 3 speakers to speak on the topic, Pandemic - The New Normal:

The discussion started off with the first speaker, Dr. Akshatha Sangannavar who is a Consultant Microbiologist and infection control officer at Cytecare Hospital. She is also a graduate from MS Ramaiah Medical College and completed her post-graduation in microbiology at Mandya Institute of Medical Sciences.  She took us through the history and causes of Covid-19 coupled with the clinical features which included the incubation period and symptoms. She also provided much insight on the risk factors, complications, types of diagnostic approaches and the age and fatality rates and how it has been the cause of the SARS and MERS outbreak. She concluded her speech with Covid-19 prevention techniques and few key facts about the vaccine; namely, which are available, the side effects and post vaccines adoptive measures

Our next speaker was KE Member, Dr. Aldon Fernandes. He holds a PHD in Biochemistry from Mumbai University and is the Vice President (Research and Development) at Bharat Serums and Vaccines Limited. He is responsible for the establishment and expansion of their biological division across India. He provided much insight on the Covid-19 vaccine; how it works, the types of vaccines, how it was invented, along with the immune system response to the same. He also took us through the differences between all the available vaccines, the worldwide clinical trial status and the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Our final speaker was yet another KE Member, Dr. John Franco Tharakan. He is an Alumnus from Massachusetts University of Technology and Harvard University and is also the CEO of Be-Ivy Education; a company aimed at holistically developing students to enable them to get into top universities, globally. He is a part of the Catholic Doctors Association and has hence played a major role in the Covid-19 response. Covid led him to think of ways as to how he can ‘inject hope’ in individuals no matter how stressful the times were. In his speech, Dr. Tharakan covered topics such as the various challenges in predicting the new normal. He also spoke about the post vaccination phase and how it was important to still continue all Covid protocols as “we know a lot of things, but what we don’t know is a lot more”. We were also taken through topics such as the positive impact of vaccination, impacts on businesses and what it would take to reach pre-covid levels. He stressed on the fact that change is inevitable and ken up post the panel discussion, all of which were very clearly and distinctly answered by each of our panelists.

The panel discussion was followed by the induction of new members into KE. Pramod D’Souza – Director of Membership, was called upon to not only induct and welcome the new members into KE but also talk about the new KE initiative of organising a National Business Plan Competition. 8 new members were introduced since the last KE Members meet in June, 2021.

Maxi F. Fernandes – VP - Human Resources, Arjas Steel Private Limited

Godwyn Chetan D’Souza – Program Manager, Greenhorn Wellness Pvt Ltd

Edrich Lewis – Proprietor, Milagres Fashion

Deepak Kumar – Proprietor, Diadem Enterprises

Shine Arackal – Director, Zera Automation

Noel Fernandes – Manager - Retail Sales, My Home Painting Solutions

Deon Gomes – Head -Social Media and Marketing, Lint Pharmaceuticals

Vijay George – Program Manager, PayPal India Pvt. Ltd

KE Business Plan Program

A brief introduction was given by Pramod D’Souza about the New KE initiative. KE is an organisation that aims at nurturing and helping individuals grow and develop their businesses and hence the whole idea behind the initiative is that a platform would be provided for individuals to showcase their businesses.

Prizes:

Winner - ₹50,000 + KE Membership for 1 year

Runner Up - ₹25,000 + KE Membership for 1 year

Third Finalists - ₹10,000 + KE Membership for 1 year

The session was concluded with a vote of thanks speech given by Pavel D’Silva. He welcomed the newly inducted members and also also took the members through the meeting agenda and the series of events.

KE currently stands at a network strength of 432 members and although physical events have not been able to take place, the response towards these virtually implemented platforms is astounding. Nevertheless, hopefully members would get an opportunity to meet and greet one another physically during the next KE members meet scheduled for October 2021.