The following report highlights key fact and relevant information regarding the 13th edition of the Young Leaders’ and Entrepreneurs’ Summit
- Dates: 23rd December – 27th December (5-day event)
- Held right after the final exams (one of the biggest challenges for this year was to prepare for the summit during the dead week and final exams)
- Introduced a new delegation system where participants were not divided as ‘head delegates’ and ‘delegates’, but rather were assigned the following roles at time of registration:
- Managing Director
- Finance Director
- Marketing Director
- Operations Director
- Communications Director
- This system inculcated a sense of responsibility within the delegates and also ensured equal participation across a team as a different round put varying levels of responsibility on different position holders
The theme for this year was ‘be inspired’ – the logic behind this was to portray that one must have some source of inspiration before they can venture out onto their entrepreneurial journey. Each delegate was also given the following card to note down their goals and important learning points over the course of YLES:
A new format was introduced for the networking night – firstly there was a panel talk in the academic block courtyard, led by Hina Rabbani Khar and Ahmed Khan (founder and CEO of cheetay). Secondly, there was a networking session in the academic block courtyards where panels of 4-5 mentors (comprising of CEO’s and industry experts) were placed in each aud and participants were divided amongst the auds to go to their respective panel and receive feedback on their business idea (that they will be using for their idea junction round). This was very well received by both the mentors and the students – who received valuable feedback on their ideas.
Present at the networking night was also our Official Incubator Partner – ID 92, which is another milestone for us. Not only did ID 92 set up a stall at our networking night and provide delegates with feedback but they also provided us with CEO’s and industry experts to judge the final round of Idea Junction. Currently ID92 is in contact with the top 3 position holders in the idea junction round to offer them potential incubation as part of our partnership this year. This was a big deal for us as the ultimate purpose of an entrepreneurial competition is to provide exposure and support to the business ideas being presented at it. The Co-founder of ID 92, Nabeel Qadeer also gave a presentation at our opening ceremony where he talked about the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Pakistan.
- YLES this year also had an official app, which was used for the following purposes:
- Navigating across LUMS (and posting the venues for rounds)
- Posting scores
- Advertising sponsors
- Assigning internal duties
- The YLES host team ramped up its academic prowess by writing original case studies, all in all we wrote the following cases and rounds:
- 5 cases on failing brands for the round Brand Rush
- 12 cases on companies that face Public Relations crisis, for the round Plug It In
- A market entry case on Starbucks for the round Strategic Business Management
- A case on a hypothetical airline for the final round of Strategic Business Management
- An extensive storyline based on a hypothetical country along with profiles of 10 different companies for the first round of Investomania *more on this later
- A set of news updates for Investomania Round 2
- 8 cases, adapted from those provided by Seed Out, for the first round of Social Enterprise
- 3 cases for the final round of Social Enterprise
Investomania Round 1: A new concept was introduced for investomania Round 1 where a stock market simulation was created in a hypothetical country. This was done in person in the free parking where we had set up 10 stock broker booths and a news centre. The news Centre comprised of 2 SMD Screens where news updates were posted at regular intervals along with price updates. There were a total of 10 companies and the finance director from each company could approach any of the stockbrokers to buy/sell/trade shares. The Entech Project of LES created an entire ‘stockbroker’ application to allow transactions to be carried out in real time. This entire project and concept took over 5 months to develop and shows the devotion of the host team to enhance the quality of the rounds at YLES.
Investomania Round 2: This round built on the concept introduced last year and created a trading game where the finalists had to trade the following commodities in real time: oil, wheat and rice. Each team was given a PC in trade lab where they had to play the game on a java interface created by the Entech Project of LES. This was again a standalone application created just for this round.
- 25th December: Christimas Carnival – a first of its kind social event held in LUMS. The Christmas night was held in the REDC lawn and it was a fun time with a lot of music, dance, and Christmas décor!
- 26th December: Concert – YLES brought strings to LUMS for the 2nd time and it was perhaps the highlight of the entire event
- Bilal Bin Saqib was the speaker for the closing ceremony and he talked about entrepreneurship and his start up Tayyabah
- The Marketing and Corporate Relations Department of LES set a new record this year for the highest amount of sponsorship ever brought by a society
- For the first time ever, YLES had international delegates – a total of 15 international students from Nepal and Afghanistan. Thus, growing our image internationally!
- As part of our social outreach program we had to SOP teams compete at YLES this year for free. These students belong to schools from underprivileged areas and were provided mentorship throughout the event. For the first time ever, an SOP team won one of the winning prizes as they placed third in the Investomania Round