Ad-wit-tise

Centre for Entrepreneurship, Nirma University organised Ad-wit-tise, an online competition for the students of Nirma University. The 3-week long event organised during March 24-April 14, 2020 aimed to bring out the unique marketing, branding, and advertising skills of the participants. The event was carried out through entrepreneurship cell?s Instagram handle in two phases, where the first phase included registering the teams and their commercial videos, and the second phase was publicising these videos. Amidst the lockdown situation due to COVID-19, the students were motivated to form a team of maximum 3 people and shoot a video indoors commercialising the products in the most innovative way possible and submitting them through a google form.

In phase 2, the videos of all registered teams were uploaded on entrepreneurship cell?s Instagram handle and participants had to publicise their videos. After a healthy competition amongst the 10 teams, selection was carried out of two best ideas that were creative and indulging; and a video that was liked the most by everybody.

The team ?Zoo Vines? consisting of Aditya Mistry, Rudram Vyas, and Maharsh Shah bagged the 1st position. They commercialised the product 5star by creating a news channel and reminding people to wash their hands thoroughly while enjoying the chocolate. Team ?The Incredibles? comprising Anmol Thaiya, Parikshith Nair, and Aishwarya Borgaonkar secured 2nd position. The team had created a video on 5star related to WhatsApp messages where a child shares her emotions and feelings during the ongoing pandemic. ?Germi King and Queen? won the most favourite commercial with over 600 likes. The team consisting of Piyushi Jain, Risha Singh, and Rishabh Sharma had created a video on toothpaste and shared importance of dental hygiene through drawings and puppet drama.

Online Mediation
To give an edge to the students of Institute of Law for conducting dispute resolution process in online mode, which is also the need of the hour, a mediation role play exercise was designed by Taruna Jakhar and Alaukik Shrivastava, Assistant Professors, Institute of Law. There were 33 groups and the exercise was conducted over a period of one week during April 8-15, 2020. The students were divided into a group of five members each, wherein one was to play the role of mediator, two counsels on behalf of disputing parties and two parties to the dispute respectively. Six different problems were devised, which covered wide range of disputes where mediation plays an important role in settlement of the same such as neighbouring, service and family matters. The students learned to put classroom learning of mediation step by step process into practice.

Online Quiz Competition
Institute of Commerce organised ?Quizzing Championship – A National Level Online Quiz Competition? on May 10, 2020. The goal of the competition was to motivate students towards continuous learning. The competition was held for students appeared in HSC during the academic year 2019-20. A total of 850 participants across the nation and few from gulf countries participated in the event. The first position was achieved by Ananya Mathur of Tagore International School, New Delhi who received a cash prize of Rs 5000 and a certificate. Sounit Karttikay from Mayoor School, Ajmer stood second and received a cash prize of Rs 3000 and a certificate. Varun Chaturvedi from DPS Gandhinagar bagged the third position and was awarded a cash prize of Rs 2000 and a certificate.

Webinar Series

• The Organisation of Civil Engineering Students, Institute of Technology organised a webinar on ?Three Lessons from Gita and Relaxation Techniques? on April 27, 2020. The webinar was delivered by Mr Rasa Parayana Dasa, Life coach, ISKCON Temple.
• Institute of Commerce organised a webinar on ?Digitisation for building business continuity and resilience during and after COVID-19? on May 27, 2020. Mr Nehal Vora, MD & CEO, Central Depository Services (India) Limited was the resource person. The session was attended by 184 participants across the country. A good number of entries were also received from the countries like Mauritius, South Africa, Namibia, Rwanda and Netherlands.

  

Institute of Law organised the following webinar series during the month of April and May 2020:

• ?Changing legal pedagogy, Rise in demand for proficient lawyers, and Transformative career paths after legal education? by Dr Purvi Pokhariyal, Director, Institute of Law, Nirma University; and Dr Bishwa Dash, Assistant Professor, Institute of Law, Nirma University on April 19, 2020.
• ?Appointment and Termination of Arbitral Tribunal? on April 20, 2020 by Mr Rahul Chaturvedi, Associate, Argus Partners; and, Mr Alok Vajpei, Associate, Singhania & Company, Mumbai.
• ?Understanding Practical Aspects of Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process? by Ms Surbhi Pareek, Senior Associate, Cyril Amarchand and Mangaldas, and Mr Kaustabh Prakash, Senior Associate, Vaish Associates Advocates on April 21, 2020.
• ?Fundamentals of Trade Mark Law? on April 22, 2019 by Mr Aditya Gupta, Attorney, IRA Law, and Ms Sonal Goel, Associate, Remfry and Sagar.
• ?Career in legal field after Law school? on May 17, 2020 by the Campus Recruitment Cell of Institute of Law was attended by CLAT aspirants, students of various law schools, parents, academician, among others. The speakers were Mr Bhumesh Verma, Managing Partner at Corp Comm Legal and Mr Saurabh Saraogi, Advocate, Oxford University.
• Centre for Corporate Law Studies, Institute of Law organised an open-to-all webinar session on May 24, 2020 on the theme ‘Impact of COVID-19 on Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code’. The speakers of the session were Mr Rohit Lalwani, Principal Associate, AMLEGALS who spoke on ‘Increase in the threshold limit, the suspension of IBC and Pre-Pack deals’ and Mr Sukrit R Kapoor, Principal Associate, Hammurabi & Solomon Partners who provided an insight on ‘Alternatives to IBC: Debt Restructuring Schemes under Companies Act, 2013’.

Institute of Pharmacy organised the following webinar series during the month of May 2020:

• National Webinar on “Opportunities and Future Scope as Pharma Warriors” was organised during May 16-17, 2020 for final year BPharm students. Resource persons included, Prof Tejal Mehta, Head, Dept of Pharmaceutics, IPNU (Recent Trends and Opportunities of Formulation Development in the Pharma Industry), Prof Jigna Shah, Head, Dept of Pharmacology (Challenges and Opportunities in Education and Research in the Current Scenario), Dr Niyati Acharya, Head, Dept of Pharmacognosy (Potential of Natural Products in Health Management and Disease Prevention), Dr Hardik Bhatt,  Head, Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Head, Centre for Advanced Instrumentation, Nirma University (Exploring Opportunities to Overcome Barriers for Development of Novel Drug Molecules), Dr Charmy Kothari, Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Analysis (Current Status and Opportunities: Analytical Methodology and Regulatory Affairs), Dr Dhaivat Parikh, Assistant Professor, Dept of Pharmaceutics and Mr Tushar Patel, Manager – Corporate Relations (Future Prospects in Pharmacy).
• National Webinar on “Opportunities and Future Scope as Pharma Warriors” during May 23-24, 2020 for third year and final year BPharm students. The webinar was organised to enlighten the pharmacy students regarding recent developments in pharmaceutical sector and the various opportunities and scope after graduation in pharmacy. Around 700 students actively participated in the webinar.

E-Hackathon 

Centre for Entrepreneurship, Nirma University organised an E-Hackathon, an online Business Idea Hackathon during May 15-17, 2020 with 150+ participants from all the institutes of Nirma University. The 3-day event aimed to find solutions to the problems faced by various Industries during the time of the pandemic was held over the online platform ‘Discord’. From the pool of 30+ Ideas received, the top 20 Ideas were chosen and teams were formed around them. The teams then worked on their ideas to turn them into a market viable product and develop an actual go-to-business strategy for it.

Workshops on “BMC – Business Model Canvas” by Akanksha Bhadoria, Senior Associate, GUSEC (Gujarat University Startup and Entrepreneurship Council), and “How to Pitch?” by Arun Phillips – Founder, Helptheworld.io were held to help the participants. A panel of 12 mentors from various sectors of Industries including alumni was also on-board to guide the teams in all the domains be it Technical, Business Plan, Legal, etc.

On May 17, 2020 participants submitted their final Pitch Decks which was viewed by a panel of three judges. The Top 5 teams further pitched their ideas live on Youtube channel competing with each other in front of another panel of two judges, Dr Chandan Chetterji, Former Director, Centre for Entrepreneurship, Gandhinagar; and Ruzan Khambatta, Founder of Wajra O’ Force Empowerment Foundation.

The first position was bagged by team of Jay Lakhani, Naman Kothari, Dhwani Malkan, Jay Patel, Ritik Rokde, and Hetvi Chaudhary from Institute of Pharmacy, Institute of Management, and Institute of Science for their product ?Currency Sanitizer?, a product developed to sanitize currency being exchanged at various shops. Second position was bagged by students of Institute of Pharmacy, Palak Kotak, Rushi Sorthiya, Parv Barot, and Sarthak Lakhani for their idea on a digitalised token service system for retail shops to ensure social distancing named as ?Ghar-E-Kirana?. Third position was bagged by Jitendra Singh, Farhan Daila, Nikhil Suthar, Om Gupta, Nikhil Tiwari, and Hardil Mistry from Institute of Pharmacy for their product ?Immuno Spray?, a spray with all the vitals that increases the immunity of a person.

Gujarat Gaurav Divas

As part of “Gujarat Gaurav Divas”, 93 students from various institutes of Nirma University enthusiastically participated in the drawing, essay writing and poetry writing competition held online on the theme “Corona Warriors of Gujarat”, during May 1 to May 10, 2020.