Institution Innovation Council of Manav Rachna University organized an Expert Talk event in on the topic “How to plan for a Startup-Legal & Ethical Steps” on 28^th April 2022.  Dr Manoj Mishra, CEO & Co-Founder of the holding and flagship company Gen-Next Biz Ventures & Consultants (www.gnbvc.in) engaged in Growth, Strategy and Start up consulting and also Angel investing, conducted the Expert Talk session. The format of the session was in an interactive mode with the set of questions raised to Expert which he answered. Dr. Subodh Saluja, Associate Professor, Department of Management and Commerce of Manav Rachna University, IIC Faculty  and a Certified Innovation Ambassador of MoE Innovation Cell was the moderator of the session. Dr. Manoj replied to questions raised by Dr. Subodh, students and participating faculty members.

Dr. Manoj shared his insights regarding the ways in which the market research should be done. He mentioned that the problem statement is what leads to idea generation, it could be a personal problem that one found or a societal problem that one saw and took a decision to provide a solution to it. Dr. Manoj mentioned that the larger the scale of the problem and the scope, the larger is the chances of growth and market for a Startup.

Dr. Manoj talked about the right team composition for a startup with complementary skills among team members, emphasizing on the need of product development technical person, finance person, sales / marketing person and operations person. Need of legal person is there from the inception stage of startup (starting with startup registration and all co-founders’ agreement) however the legal service can be hired/outsourced. He explained the importance of financial management and how the funds are to be managed in a Startup.  Dr. Manoj clarified some terms like Burn rate, what is meant by the word ‘ask’ in the startup community, what is meant by equity, what is meant by the term loan, so various questions regarding the basics of the startup and entrepreneurship were discussed in the session. Examples of business ethics were sought to make participants understand the importance of business ethics. The students participated very enthusiastically in this session with many questions which were all addressed by Dr Manoj. Overall, it was a great session and towards the end of the session vote of thanks was given by Dr. Susmita Ray, IIC President and Dr. Manoj was given a Memento and a sapling as a token of appreciation from Manav Rachna University