Best Practices 2019-20

Best Practice A

1.      Title of the Practice

Providing a platform to the students for community service and nurturing their commitment for the society.

2.      Goal

Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies prides itself on its chosen mission of “To explore new frontiers of knowledge so as to nurture value driven, socially responsive, committed and ethical citizens of the world”. In sync with our mission, we are striving to provide a platform for the students to become value-driven leaders who could blend competitive spirit and desire to succeed with a sense of integrity and a need to give something back to the society which has become the need of the hour keeping in mind the modern scenario.

Our objective is to create a platform where the students can work towards improving the quality of life of people in need while also empowering them to sustain these improvements. Since this requires an involvement of the stakeholders, we also aim to create an awareness among people on various social issues. 

3.      The Context

Our society is plagued with various issues like malnutrition in children, hygiene related issues, food safety, air and water pollution, sanitation, literacy, and unemployment. The people living in the urban slum communities are facing these challenges and many more. 

Towards this, we have undertaken several outreach projects with the support of NGOs and SOPs. We are also striving towards generating awareness in the people about the various social issues and their potential solutions through street theatre, sensitisation sessions, gamification and other engaging activities.

4.      The Practice

ENACTUS, or Entrepreneurial Action through Us, is an international not-for-profit organisation that works with business leaders and university students across the globe to develop outreach projects that improve the quality of life of people in need. Their approach involves motivating the students to identify humanitarian needs and fulfilling them through innovative social business models. 

ENACTUS is a platform where each student gets the opportunity to awake entrepreneurial spirit along with higher education, thus furnishing one’s own skills. The students become value-driven leaders who could blend competitive spirit and desire to succeed with a sense of integrity and a need to give something back to the society which has become the need of the hour keeping in mind the modern scenario. Learning the importance of entrepreneurship skills along with leadership qualities, team management, formation of real life business models is equally important for overall development of the individual.

5.    Evidence of success 

One of the most accomplished teams in India, ENACTUS SSCBS has various successful past projects and is currently working on 3 developmental projects, i.e, Project Khidki, Project Avya and Project Pravaah.

Project Khidki aims to eliminate malnutrition from urban slum communities through an all pervasive approach. We conducted various health camps and awareness drives to educate the people about the invisible evil of malnutrition. The project was successfully delinked with support from the Department of Women and Child Development and our NGO partner, using a network of NGOs and SOPs.

Project Pravaah offers holistic clean air solutions at an affordable price while enabling the skilled unemployed youth to raise their own livelihoods. Our offering includes a low cost air purifier, coupled with a set of NASA-accredited air purifying plants which come in stubble pots. The project was launched in an RWA in Rohini, with support from the MLA. It has created significant impact through various sensitisation sessions, reduction in stubble burning, employment to the underprivileged youth and affordable solutions to clean air through the product mix.

Project Avya was launched in the Bhalswa community near Jahangirpuri with the objective to provide potable water solutions to urban slum communities by developing low cost customized household filtration systems through a community-based approach. Extensive research is conducted on the water supplied in a particular area, and accordingly a water filter is developed to eliminate the contaminants present in the water at the lowest possible cost. Residents are sensitised about the need for clean drinking water and sanitary practices.  

6.      Problems

The projects have had a significant impact on the society, but have also encountered many hurdles in this process. One of the major problems faced by almost every project is the lack of acceptance of the need for a solution by the people in the early stages of the project. More than half of the people fail to recognise the need for holistic solutions and are very hesitant to change their current state of living. Low turnout of individuals along with lack of interest in the sessions also acts as a barrier in conveying the desired message. Search for technical experts who provide assistance in creating value offering and high lead time, sometimes delays the process of providing the most affordable solutions to the consumers. More funds will also help in shaping our projects in a better way.

7.      Notes

In the process, our students won many awards and many partnerships were created.

Enactus: Number of achievements of society (2019-20): 12

1.  Winners: FAMAE Grant worth $5,000, 2019

2.  Top 12: World Water Race, 2019

3.  World Regional Finalists: Hult Prize, 2020

4.  Winners: KPMG Business Ethics Grant 2019 worth ₹50,000, 2019

5.  Best Collaboration Award: Enactus Cares ‘Ideas for Impact’, 2020 (Vendor-Yatra)

6.  Best Collaboration Award: Enactus Cares ‘Ideas for Impact’, 2020 (Rasad)

7.  Semi Finalists: Enactus India National Symposium & Competition, 2019

8.  Winners: Business Plan Competition (IBS Gurgaon), 2020

9.  Winners: Empresario Business Plan Competition (IIT Kharagpur), 2020

10.  Winners: Hult Prize Campus Round, 2020

11.  Winners: Breeze Business Plan Competition (Shiv Nadar University), 2020

12.  Winners: Entrigue Business Plan Competition (College of Vocational Studies), 2020

Best Practice B

Title: Creating employment-ready under-graduate student

Objective: In sync with our vision, “To create a centre of excellence for learning, dedicated to meet the aspirations of society”, we are striving to craft management and technical professionals to meet the aspirations of the society. Our goal is to work towards increasing the employability of our under-graduate students. 

Context: According to the India Skills Report 2019-201, amongst the fresh candidates joining the workforce in our country, less than 50% were found to be employable. The report further suggests that increasing the number of people who can get employment is a requirement for actualizing the vision of our Prime Minister Sh. Narendra Modi’s vision of India becoming a $5 trillion economy. 

1India Skills Report is a joint initiative by PeopleStrong, a Global Talent Assessment Company, in collaboration with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) along with partners like UNDP, AICTE, and AIU. (https://www.insightsonindia.com/2019/12/13/india-skills-report/)

Practice: To achieve our goal, we are working towards using innovative methods to facilitate skill up-gradation of our students. Our endeavours include working towards improving relationships with the industry, taking help from our alumni to further develop the skill set of our students. 

In the past years, we have been conducting “Company Sessions” throughout the year with renowned companies including Schindler, KPMG, EY, Flipkart. Another regular activity has been the summer internships been undertaken by our students at some of the leading companies like BCG, EY, KPMG, PwC, CBRE, Deloitte, Ogilvy and Mather, M&C Saatchi, American Express, Aon Hewitt, Alamak, B9 Beverages, Inshorts, Teach for India, Nearbuy, Sberbank, Willis Towers Watson. The college also recognizes and awards the top 3 internship project reports each year. 

We started many new activities in 2018-19. These include “Industry Engagement” through vivas/presentations conducted for the summer internships by the industry in an online mode. 

In 2019-20, we have started the “Care” programme where our alumni with many years of industry experience reach out to mentor the current students. In the pilot run of this programme, mentors were assigned to 38 students. The emergence of the unprecedented situation of the pandemic led us to start the “Beat the Lockdown Series” in March 2020 where we reached out to the students through webinars.

Evidence of success: These practices have helped in honing the skills of the students resulting in a greater sense of dedication in the students, industry ready skills, and overall growth and development. This has helped recruiters put faith in us and engage with us better. The following statistics from the past three academic year represent the same:

Problems encountered and resources required: Manual resume authentication and resume repository management is not only time consuming, it is also prone to errors. Placement cell requires frequent communication with the students. A lot of such information is time sensitive. Emails, our current mode of communication with the students for dissemination of placement related information, is not completely free of problems. Many times, incorrect email information and other human errors have resulted in students missing out on important deadlines and opportunities. 

The placement processes can be conducted more efficiently if a central portal for placement is developed. The portal would help the recruiters interact with the college better, be more involved in the process, and have better faith in the college due to transparency. 

Further, this would also help the college keep the students updated, it would reduce discrepancies, build a better student-institute connect and make processes much more transparent.

7.3 Institutional Distinctiveness

In line of vision of the college, a section 8 company SSCBS Innovation and Incubation Foundation (SIIF) was started in 2016 by the college in collaboration with Govt of NCT, Delhi. SIIF is creating a distinctive edge for the college to meet the entrepreneurial aspirations of primarily the students, alumni and staff of the college.  

SIIF’s USP has been the high-quality engagement with the start-ups, mentoring and giving strategic advisory as well as helping them to resolve day-to-day business challenges.  Along with this distinctive strength, SIIF has pushed the start-ups to comply with law, have good business ethics and to engage with customers. 

SIIF also has cutting edge through excellent facilities at disposal of incubatees, and continuously making them better.  We offer seating capacity of 70+ dedicated workstations for start-ups, a separate class-room for training sessions, one large Board Room / conference room, and several independent meeting rooms, resource centre, pantry – all for the benefit of start-ups.  

Since the launch of initiative in February 2016, SIIF has got a grant of Rs. 2 Cr. from GNCTD, which were deployed for setting up the incubation centre, investing in start-ups and running the incubation activities.   The summary of impact created is:

SIIF has recognition from DST, Govt. of India, as a TBI.  SIIF also has certificates of exemption from Income Tax authorities u/s 12AA and 80G.  

The company has been instrumental in helping students and alumni of SSCBS build their ideas and converting them into successful ventures, creating jobs and opportunities for others. SIIF is also the guide / mentor to Yuva, the entrepreneur cell of the college.