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CINE
Ranjit Saha
Knowledge Network Making the Youth Aware
CINE
Project Report
Submitted To
Prof. Anil Gupta
Submitted by
Ranjit Saha
IIMA
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT, AHMEDABAD
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CINE
Ranjit Saha
The problem or condition being addressed
A brief account of the issue and its present status
The prerequisite in taking a good decision is to know the relevant information that may have a
say on the decision. Most of us feel that we did not get proper information at every stage of our
life while taking important decisions. The situation exacerbates when more often than not people
are bombarded with ill information and land up making the wrong choices.
Implications of the condition on society

Due to lack of information, thousands of good prospective students are losing their
chances of having a brighter future.

Some time they take decision without any information; in the worst case relying on ill
information only to find the disappointing result

This information gap and the consequences thereupon creates a societal-instability that
gives rise to uncalled-for events and disturbing elements in society
The Idea
The Statement of the Initiative
The mission of the organization is to create a link between the knowledge pool of the country
(successful professionals in diverse areas – such as medicine, law, engineering, management etc)
and the youngsters of the nation. Our aim would be to help the future generation to make better
informed decision about their career.
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The three primary stakeholders in the process are - (a) people, especially student community, in
need of information, (b) a knowledge-pool of people, who are successful in varied fields with an
origination from NB and a burning desire to give back something materialistic to society, (c) the
medium of communication between the two earlier stake holders.
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Ranjit Saha
Volunteer
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Operational Model
The Details of the Execution Plan
We envisage accomplishing our mission through the following set of activities:
Range of Activities
Direct
Workshop
Counseling
Indirect
Seminar
Online
News Paper
Instead of covering a wide geographical area at the very upfront, Ushashi aims to start its
initiative of information dissemination with a focus on a smaller geographical area. At the initial
stage the geographical area under consideration would be North Bengal (NB) of West Bengal. At
a later stage the model would be replicated in other geographical areas with proper adjustments.
Indirect
The penetration of Internet in NB is not that high till date, it is not an optimum medium to reach
to people in order to seek their problems. Hence, we have decided to get into collaboration with a
local news paper having the maximum circulation over the region (more than 70% percent
readership is with this particular news paper). As the people starts to perceive the benefit of this
information flow and credibility is established among the mass, a website would be launched with
specific section of online forums dedicated to specific topic. Each forum would be moderated by
a member of the knowledge-pool having specialized knowledge in that particular field. During
this period there would be exchange of information between the news paper and the website.
Subsequently, several paid services would be launched in addition to the free services of
discussion in forum. One such service could be real-time consultancy over internet in the field of
education.
CINE
Ranjit Saha
Direct
For proper coverage of student population indirect ways to information is not going to be
sufficient. The range of activities for direct dissemination of information will involve volunteers
delivering seminars, conducting workshops, etc as well as full time employees for one-on-one
counseling and administrative backup. The services offered through direct interaction will be a
combination of paid services (holding seminars, workshops, etc for schools, colonies, etc) and
non-paid services (counseling sessions).
Feasibility and Sustainability of the Idea
Feasibility
Getting collaboration from volunteers should not be difficult as we are already in touch with our
batch mates and other people from NB through online communities and they have expressed
interest in this initiative. The newspaper would be quite willing to collaborate with us simply
because it would greatly increase their reputation and readership. It would be a symbiotic
relationship between us. The volunteers would be well established in their careers and therefore
would be able to provide credible information regarding their area of expertise. The target
audience would definitely be interested in such an initiative as they will be the ones who will
benefit from this.
Sustainability
The volunteers who will constitute the knowledge pool will be all well settled people. They
would not have much worry about their future career and would be able to devote some time to
this initiative from their daily lives. New volunteers can always be included as and when the
need arises. Usually the need will arise due to large number of queries coming in from the
audience. This would take some time to happen and by then we would have established our
credibility and should be able to get more volunteers for this.
The sustainability of the organization will also depend on our ability to generate enough revenue
to finance our activities. The initial funding will be met mostly through donations. However, we
will be able to attain financial viability as our revenue generating activities gain popularity. The
long term sources of revenues and expenses for the organization:
Expenses
Sources of revenue
Administrative expenses (salaries, rent, etc)
Website maintenance
Donations
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*Marketing expenses
Ranjit Saha
*Fee from conducting workshops and seminars
Innovativeness of the Idea
Why is the initiative unique?
This model would enable people to get the required information directly from horse’s mouth. The
knowledge pool would comprise of people having expertise in specific fields and thereby
covering almost the whole spectrum of conceivable knowledge. This would help to cater to the
varied information requirement with equal degree of efficiency. There are a number of people
who want to do something for the upliftment of fellow citizens without sacrificing their normal
livelihood. Uniting these people to work together is a monstrous task and at the same time this
acts as a shield against emulating this model by every other person. None of the existing business
models has been able to reap the benefit out of this situation and to properly channelize that to the
society at large. The effort being initiated by students only brings credibility to this and thereby
takes care of the most important concern of the knowledge-pool members.
A comparison of the idea vis-à-vis existing solutions to the issue
There are a number of establishments who cater to the informational needs with a focus on
individual topics. These sources range from face-to-face career counseling and news paper
editorial to paid online counseling services. However, their reach and frequency is very limited.
And this inhibits the benefit to flow through the society properly.
The objective of Ushashi is to arrest the issues by concentrating on the root cause itself. The
varied background of members of the knowledge-pool would ensure to effectively communicate
on several topics simultaneously from within the same platform. This would bring convenience to
people as they would need to rely on single source for getting correct and updated information as
per their need. While Internet has undisputed lead over other means of communication as far as
accessibility is concerned, the remote pockets of NB can only be accessed through news paper at
present. Hence, the dual mode of communication would serve the purpose effectively.
We have contacts of large number of people from NB who are successful. Bringing even a small
percentage of those people into the knowledge-pool would mean a large number of volunteers in
this initiative. And this would ensure that their response even on a time-sliced basis would be
comparable to real time response.
CINE
Ranjit Saha
Feedback:
1. The initiative should encourage entrepreneurial activities in the region as well.
Once the initiative finds a base in its initial set of activities, it would like to incorporate
this. The encouragement of entrepreneurial activities of the local people is inline with the
objective of this initiative to help the people to understand their own potential.
2. Get in touch with professors and students of Sikkim Manipal University for this
initiative
I would get intouch with the Professors and students of Sikkim Manipal University after I
get back to home in April, 2007. Other Engineering college, Law college, Medical college
would also be included in the list to scout for volunteers.
The volunteers of the e-community have been surveyed and there has been a very high
positive response from them to support this initiative (the survey results are included in the
ppt). There would be follow up drive to get them actively involved in April, 2007. If things
go properly as planned, there would be a fully functional website by the end of April, 07 to
cater to the requirements of this initiative.