Three Nagpur entrepreneurs among 60 being mentored by Cornell University

NAGPUR: Three city entrepreneurs, who launched their startups in recent years, are among the first batch of 60 from Maharashtra being mentored as part of a year-long Cornell Maha 60 accelerator programme. Launched in 2020, the initiative is being run by the department of industries, Maharashtra government, in collaboration with Cornell University.
Faculty members from the topped ranked US university have been flying down to Mumbai to groom these entrepreneurs along with industry experts. The programme has also honed them with different business skill sets beside bringing the advantage of networking with different entrepreneurs.
Interviews, pitching sessions, and group discussions were held to shortlist the cohort of final 60. Startups registered in Maharashtra are eligible for the programme. Entrepreneurs from Mumbai, Pune and from varied fields are part of the first batch.
Husain Rasheed of Unboxing Art, Sameer Gautam of Traffic Rewards, and Amol Morankar of Riva Labs were selected from over 4,000 applicants a year ago. As they near the completion of the programme, the trio said mentoring has already started benefitting them in their businesses.
“Basically, it’s a general management course in entrepreneurship with more focus on micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). In-person classes are held in Mumbai. The rest of the days we have online sessions which include problem solving in our current businesses. Sales, marketing, finance, and pitching to investors are taught,” said Rasheed.
Rasheed’s startup Unboxing Art helps people discover creativity within to make a career out of it. “We offer short-term courses on creative forms which may not be available in academies or institutes. Over 6,800 students from different fields have passed out from Unboxing Art,” he said.
Gautam has got good insights in leadership and know-how on sustaining the right business model. “Professors from Cornell bring in a lot of value. Some of them have worked with top billionaires of the world. The programme consists of multiple tracks like leadership and customer discovery. The mentorship helped me in learning about the right business model to set up a platform,” he said.
Traffic Rewards was born after Gautam decided to work out a system to incentivise law-abiding individuals. “I used to help accident victims, file FIRs against violators and aggressively follow them up. I thought those following traffic rules were in majority and must be rewarded. We started with traffic as the first behaviour and can be extended to other good deeds,” he said.
Morankar said Cornell Maha60 has helped him to enhance his skills in the areas of general management, leadership qualities and marketing management. “It certainly taught us to understand several functional dimensions of a successful organization in this VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world,” he said.