I was a part of the global Odyssey 5.0 event which was organized by BM & Eco students. This event was held to give us an exposure to witness how a business works in real life. We had a range of stall categories to choose from. I along with my friends chose the fashion category, and for the same we decided to sell stuff ranging from candles, to bracelets, to clips, to crochet items, etc.

LO1: Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I am very much interested in fashion, and accessories so I used it as my strength to identify creative products to sell that have higher demand so that more customers are attracted to our stall and we make a profit out of it. However, initially we weren’t able to sell as many products as we expected, because many of the people were selling the similar categories of stuff that we were selling, thus we improvised on our marketing strategies and the pricing deals and then eventually we were able to sell multiple products at great prices which benefited both the parties.

LO 5 : Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

As this was a student-led event, it was a collective effort of making/buying the products to selling the products at the event. This helped me coordinate with my team members better, we had all distributed our work equally, while one person was responsible collecting the cash, the other was responsible for packing the products and so on. Collaborating with one another also made the entire process much quicker and smoother.

LO 7 : Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

Ethics are a really important aspect of business. We followed business ethics by being fair, reasonable and non biased towards all the customers. Other than that we made sure that our products were of good quality and were sold for the fairest prices. and not overpriced. Lastly we not only donated Rs.200 to donate to an NGO, but additionally, we also gave 10% of our total earning towards the same.

Overall, the event was a great success, we made ethical choices and decisions for our business in order to earn profit. I personally learnt a lot of new concepts and understood the functioning of a business. This event was a fun and engaging experience which helped me personally since this is also something that I want to persue as my career.