It is the year of celebrations at CIIE! We completed a decade since the incorporation of CIIE Initiatives. You know that already! In case you haven’t, you should catch Prof. Rakesh Basant’s blog on CIIE’s evolution.
Milestones tend to excite. They also make you reflective and that’s what happened to us. Reminiscing over our journey and the vivid experiences on the way, we knew that we had to tell the story of the last decade. More importantly, tell stories of those that are foundational to CIIE, to this last decade — our entrepreneurs. In essence, we wanted to tell stories of heroes.
Inspired, we set out on a mission about a year ago. We identified 78 entrepreneurs from 50 of the startups supported by us, rolled up our sleeves and delved into their stories. We spoke to them, went into the details of their struggles and fears (some of those made us shudder!), recounted the glories and moments of pride (we felt our heart swelling up too!). We struggled to write these stories! We wanted the world to live the lives of our heroes. We would not have it any other way. That took time and countless iterations and improvements.
Earlier this year, roughly about 10 months since we delved into this project, we released this book of stories “CIIE — Celebrating 10 Years of Experiments and Entrepreneurs.” Folks at @flexiple partnered with us to develop this book.
We now bring these stories to you. Every Friday evening, starting from tomorrow, we will share with you, a story of an entrepreneur and the joys, glories, heartbreaks, anguish, ecstasy, gloom, anxiety, despair and optimism.
I am certain that these stories will hold you. They will speak to the entrepreneur and the hero in you. If they move you to tell your entrepreneurship story, talk to us. We love stories! If they inspire you towards that difficult but deeply fulfilling path of entrepreneurship, reach out to us. You know where to find us.