India is the land of opportunities but every opportunity requires an entrepreneurial eye to be explored.
CERTEZA, the maiden event organized by Entrecom 06 (Entrepreneurship Committee) of SPJIMR on the 1st of February 2007 at the SPJIMR auditorium sets out to do exactly the same thing, that is exploring exciting opportunities in diverse fields and also identifying the would be "world beaters" with entrepreneurial flair.

The event started with Mr. Akhil Chaturvedi, Director, Provogue, addressing the teams and the audience. About 45 teams from top B Schools like NITIE, JBIMS etc. and top engineering colleges like VJTI, K J Somaiya etc. were present to participate in the event.

The event was divided in two rounds. The first round was named. 'Make the Penny Count' .It tested how teams can best allocate and prioritize their resources while executing a plan. The rules were simple "Each team has 135 Crores to spend on developing a business in the field of Medical Tourism", now they need to spend it. There was a questionnaire of 15 questions about how the allocations will be done by each team. Questions were indicative of the kind of dilemmas entrepreneurs usually face.

The second round 'Business Out of the Box' saw people preparing an innovative business plan in the field of rural retail. The teams were given 1 hour to prepare the plan and then present it in front of the judge's panel. The judges included U M Lad (VP-Commercial, Trent, Tata), Manish K (Design Head, Shoppers Stop), Jayakar Shettygara (Trading Manager, Shoppers Stop), Karandeep Kaur (Category Manager - Gourmet Food, HyperCITY), Lancy Mathias, (Category Manager - Home & Furniture, HyperCITY)

Towards the end, a quiz was conducted .Here too the flavor was entrepreneurship. Questions related to the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and their companies were asked. Audience enjoyed the on the spot prizes and the light moments which the quiz provided After the quiz, results were announced for the day's events, RSUI Pune emerged as the winners while NITIE got the runner's up and the first Runner's up. The winners received Rs 16000 while Rs 14000 and Rs 12000 were awarded to the 1st & the 2nd runners up respectively.

After the event the judges told the audience their criterion of selection of winners in which it came out that apart from the innovativeness, the implementation feasibility and the commercial objective parts are equally important. A concluding speech was given by Prof. M S Rao, faculty coordinator, Entrepreneurship Committee, SPJIMR in which he spoke about the current need to spread the entrepreneurial spirit amongst students.

SPJIMR now has an entrepreneurship event of its own in the form of "CERTEZA", setting a trend for other B schools to follow, as it has always been doing!!!