Leverage, the Venture Capital and Private Equity Club of IIM-A and CIIE jointly organized the first Venture Capital and Private Equity Conference on the 6th and 7th of February, 2009. The theme of the conference was "Investing and Managing Portfolios in Distressed Times". The symposium brought together industry experts, advisors, academicians, and students with the aim of identifying and addressing key issues and trends relevant to venture capitalists, PE investors and entrepreneurs in the current environment.

The conference attempted to focus on current issues in this sector and brought down 14 industry experts from companies like TPG, Apollo, Nexus Capital, DFJ, Citi Venture Capital, Kotak Private Equity amongst others. Mr. Kanwal Rekhi, MD, Inventus Capital Partners, Mr. M Damodaran, former Chairman of SEBI, Mr. Mohanjit Jolly, Executive Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mr. Mahesh Murthy, Managing Partner of Seedfund were some of the star speakers at the conference. The conference saw keen participation from corporates with over 40 firms expressing interest to participate.

The conference hosted over 500 participants over two days and a number of speaker sessions, panel discussions, workshops and competitions. The Business Plan Showcase event presented a unique opportunity for budding entrepreneurs to interact and network with investors. The conference also witnessed the launch of the first Venture Capital & Private Equity Publication of Leverage & IIM-A.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish nears 100,000 copies sold !

"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" is the advice given to the graduating students of Stanford by the legendary CEO of Apple Steve Jobs.

Now Rashmi Bansal from the IIMA batch of '93 has made that advice the focus of her book profiling the lives of 25 entrepreneurs from IIMA. The entrepreneurs profiled include the likes of Rashesh Shah of Edelweiss and Sanjeev Bhikchandani of Naukri.com. The book was published by CIIE. Since its launch at the Entrepreneurs' Conference in July 2008, it has been a runaway success, having sold more than 94,000 copies by May 2009 and still ruling best seller lists.