CHENNAI: A bustling crowd on a Sunday morning at a college is a rare sight. But at MOP Vaishnav College For Women, the students and the staff were enthusiastically working an extra day of the week to welcome Chennaiites to their MOP Bazaar.
People gathered around the fortune teller eagerly waiting for their card reading. In front of the memory booth stood a long queue of students wanting to click pictures with the posters from their favourite sitcoms and movies.
The boards of jewellery bazaars and food counters were visible but it was almost impossible to take an easy peek into the stores packed with people.
“This year we are celebrating the silver jubilee of the annual bazaar. We haven’t taken a pause, not even during the pandemic. We continued to conduct the programme online and organised an e-bazaar, for the past two years. We are now back with a full-fledged crowd, with more stalls and participants,” shared Archna Prasad, dean of Student Affairs.
The annual bazaar was started to let the students experience entrepreneurship during their initial college years. Since 1998, the college has been promoting the same idea and involving more people in this initiative.
“One of our goals is to create economically empowered women and one way of doing that is by promoting entrepreneurship. We firmly believe that entrepreneurs become job providers and they create multiple effects on society. When you empower women, they create livelihood opportunities for several others,” she said.
The Ministry of Entrepreneurship under the Sansad, the student leadership body of the college, manages the bazaar with guidance and support from professors and alumni.
“We had an overwhelming response of more than 150 applications for the stalls. Our team of 26 students selected 75 based on their USP, individuality and experience. There are five categories food and beverages, clothing and accessories, gifts and artefacts, games and entertainment, and cosmetics.
Five stalls are beneficiaries that come under the college’s MOP Cares, which provides opportunities for the NGOs,” said Laxsana KS and Stuti Surana, ministers of entrepreneurship and final year BBA students. Speaking about managing both academics and the activities of the bazaar, they added, “Our teachers have been supportive. They are ready to provide extra training since we had been missing our classes.
Even though our exams are coming up next week, we have time to manage everything.” For most of the students, the offline bazaar was a new experience. The event was inaugurated by Eqbal Manoj, senior vice president and zonal head, of the Federal Bank. He interacted with the students and they got an idea about how banks are interested in financing their business ideas.
“The students managed everything from designs, organising stalls, inviting alumni to conduct the event,” noted Archna. Welcoming a crowd of almost 7,000 on the first day of the two-day event, the college provided an environment for students to learn how to run a business from scratch. Archna concluded, “From choosing a stall to interacting with vendors, the students looked for methods to improve their selling skills and learnt how to build good customer relationships. We hope to carry forward this initiative in the coming years.”