Day 1: fun,food and business

What do you do when you visit a foreign country? The most important thing: CLICK PICTURES!!  as many pictures as possible, be it of the road, the chair, the pillow, the sky, every little bit of it! And that is exactly what I did.

Looks rather dull, doesn't it? But my intention was to capture every moment of it and I did just that!

It was raining early in the morning but the sullen climate was overpowered by the sumptuous spread of breakfast that we all got to eat every day: Eggs, bread, fruit salad, broccoli and a cup of Ceylon tea to finish it off! We all headed off to the lobby chattering about our travel and cherishing moments from our ice-breaker and in the process meeting a lot of new people and extending friendship!

After a customary selfie and a fan moment which my bright yellow umbrella enjoyed, we all headed out to the university which was less than a kilometer away.

It was vagarious to see so many people riding bikes (Ofo, Mobikes) and opting for greener transport systems (Electric bus and two-wheeler) and I had made up my mind to ride a bike before the summit concluded! It was reassuring to see the various initiatives the people unanimously took to cut down pollution and head towards sustainability!

What I appreciate even more is the widespread use of mobile payment technology: Alipay. The entire university supports the e-payment methodology and I was mesmerized to see the successful, full-fledged implementation and the ease of lifestyle that it brought in: QR code was essential as water in this city!

We all headed towards the auditorium where the opening ceremony was to be held. 

We had a very informative session by a professor at the university who spoke about the entrepreneurship trend in China.The success rate being 5% and the liberal arts stream topping the charts when it comes to startups.

Next, we had Jennifer Zhang, a former ASES member and an angel investor talk about her journey in ASES and the challenges of being an angel investor. The aspects they look into when they invest in a startup, the technologies and the ups and downs through her 12 year career in the field of entrepreneurship.

Soon after we had a close friend of Jennifer Zhang from Tokbox who spoke about their pioneering push to talk feature and their intermittent position as a top chat application which later was dismissed because of other applications stealing the idea.

I then realized that it is not just the technology but a lot of ethical aspects and a well rounded analysis that is pivotal for anyone entering the entrepreneurial domain, because there is a lot of competition and one needs to find the trough and enter!

We were then escorted to one of the university canteens for lunch and being an always hungry, vegetarian foodie , my emotions slipped into a contradicting mess!

As I waited in the line for my turn to order food, I felt for the very first time a pang after seeing a variety of food! As they all contained meat I had to eat just veggies; some which looked like fruits and some like noodles and of course a lot of melon!

But later that day I discovered something amazing, the milk tea. A green milk tea with tapioca pearls was the most refreshing drink I had ever tasted and I was all set.

After a surprisingly good lunch, we all headed out to Neospace, a building on campus where we all had got together for the ice-breaker. There we had a talk by Mr. Enrico on his startup Doo+ ; a startup in the non-profit sector. He spoke about how he was on his career high and was a really good public image and lead a luxurious life but later on felt that something was missing and wanted to give back to the society. Hence he started Doo+.  He spoke about the platform Doo+ vibe, an event where the investors and entrepreneurs mostly in the non-profit sector would find collaboration and further their initiatives.

What followed next was extremely fun-filled and entertaining. They had planned sets of activities, which had teams of  6 taking part in five different activities all over the campus and a lot of running around to do.

And our team successfully and swiftly completed all the activities and certainly had the most fun.

Since I was a vegetarian and I had another vegetarian, Indian delegate, we were both taken to a Muslim canteen ( the vegetarian canteen) for some delicious food and I can't stress enough on the fact that they took care of our food preferences and I am so glad for the same.

After a yummy meal, we all headed back to Neospace where we all shared our entrepreneurial ideas, experiences.

And eventually we all formed teams which pertained to our interests and we had to work on our pitch presentation, a  business plan for our ideas and I realized, this is going to be one hell of an experience!

The simple concept of monkeys, lions in the entrepreneurial domain stuck with me; I learnt that there are some companies/startups which move from place to place seeking more profits and hence are termed as the monkeys. While there are certain other giants who establish themselves and scale effortlessly, dominating the market and they are termed as the lions. Pretty simple to understand huh!

Most of the delegates present there had their own startups or are working for certain startups and the conviction and confidence with which they questioned, discussed and deliberated about ideas left me spellbound, and this booming entrepreneurial environment and the opportunities provided are the reason why foreign companies find it hard to establish and scale in China( eg: Didi-the cab hiring app which has widely replaced Uber, BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) the three big giants which rule the roost when it comes to China for China market)

We had a quick discussion on the further plan of action for our pitch presentation and learned about the Design Sprint methods by Google Ventures and we headed back to our hotel for a quick chat on our team goal ( Introduction of VR-based education for school students to enhance independent and creative thinking).

Hard work, enthusiasm and a lot of focus is what we needed and we were all geared up for it! The competition was in the air.