Kingston Study Ventures Tour


( The team in front of the car - Just before the tour began)


Prerna, alumni from the batch of 2006 had written about the Kingston Ventures Tour in her blog last year and I was eager to experience the day. Today, the 26th of May, we had out Kingston Ventures Tour.

Kingston Ventures Tour is an idea which a group of retired executives living in Kingston (or RELIKS as they call themselves) came up with. Each of the teams were handed a map, a van and asked to visit 3 companies in Kingston. We were expected to meet the President/CEO of these companies, talk to them, get to know about the entrepreneur challenges that they faced and at the end of the day make a 90 second elevator pitch.

The day was fun. We visited three companies.
a) Transformix - Met the President, a wonderful lady who talked about an innovative strategy that was given as input to her last year by the MBA students. She talked passionately about her company and introduced us to her team of engineers (she calls them "geeks".)

b)Kingston Software Factory: For Entrepreneurs, who want to transform their ideas into world market products, KSF is the catalyst for IT innovation. It was very interesting talking to the President about the dot com scenario and the Google ad revenue generation model. If I get some time, during stage 4 of the program, I will definitely take up an assignment for them.

c) Cancoil Thermal Corporation: is one of North America’s fastest growing manufacturers of Refrigeration, Air Conditioning and Ventilation systems and OEM coils. The CEO of the company, an Indian immigrant talked about his entrepreneur journey. He talked about his passion for starting something new, his definition of work, his struggle, his tips. He had loads of experience and one just felt like continuously listening to him. Unfortunately, we had less time in hand and could stay at his place for only a couple of hours.

After visiting all these diverse companies, we got back to our team room and started the brainstorming. We prepared a 90 second elevator speech.I was the spokesperson from my team. I did manage to give a 90 second elevator speech ( was quite nervous speaking in front of a huge audience) but a team that had lots of creativity and humor in their speech walked away with the trophy. Parameters for decision making: Value, creativity and delivery.

It was an awesome experience and we had a great day. It ended with a wine and cheese session.