The Campus Inc.

Young students in India after completing their school education wander into universities to specialize in various disciplines. Majority of these students aren’t able to find right focus even during their graduation period. They start to believe, for example, that this is what is destined for them or they will correct at a later date. But the fact of the matter is during this whole cycle, industry experience remains obscure to them. If at all they get a chance to interact with Industry stalwarts will the things might start looking up for them. Further there is another set of who are talented in their own right or even a set of students who are the enterprising lot. It is very important that these guys should from Day 0 work with industry-researchers as one. Any delay or void of opportunity on industry-academia-peer interaction front can lead to permanent losses. Or we can look at this in following way: A forum that removes this gap and facilitates interaction between students-industry-academia can bolster our country’s growth many times over.

The Original Guru

Abhishek Bachhan did an excellent job in Guru and I loved it. But this was not the first attempt in the family to do a startup subject in a movie. Rather in my view Big B did this at least 2 times long long ago. 

One of my favorite Big B movie is Manzil (probably even lesser known than its song: "Rimjhim gire Saawan..") - in which he plays a fresher from college, least interested in getting a job and highly motivated to startup. He identifies a recycling business - repair defunct galvanometers and sell them to companies and universities. He is hell bent to do it, but there are relationships - friendship, love, mother that make the job a bit complex. The guy is highly ethical in business but falters when a local technician - Pyarelal screws him after being bribed by the market leader. And the relationships go for a toss when the enterpreneur's forecasts are not met. Mired into litigation and emotionally distraught, he learns the hard way and then does it by himself - learns physics and completes the pending order before living happily ever after.

In contrast came another movie - Trishul. Here was a Vijay, highly confident, oozed chutzpah and who was an effective executioner. The audacious commitments were met incredibly fast and very smoothly. He would use, saam-daam-dand-bhed in the most effective manner. However the motive here was someone's downfall more than own rise. But can a conviction become so strong so as to replace the market leader in no time and can one garner such support, create the strongest team and beat the best in the business?