The Government College University Lahore on Wednesday invited top entrepreneurs and chief executive officers to their campus to share their experiences with students with an aim to make the youth more resilient and empowered.
The successful entrepreneurs shared their failures with GCU students and told them to never fear failures in life. They added that the prerequisite for success is passion, "junoon", for the work.
Vice-Chancellor Prof. Dr Asghar Zaidi opened the TEDx style talks which were followed by addresses of top entrepreneurs of Pakistan.
The entrepreneurial talks titled Junoon Talks x GCU were also recorded for a larger audience on social media under the auspices of the University's Bussiness Incubation Centre.
Salim Ghauri, the founder and CEO NetSol Technologies, Nabeel Qadir, the founder of DirAction, Fatima Asad Said, the CEO of Abacus Global, and many other eminent and successful entrepreneurs addressed the students in first session and inspired them to come up with innovative ideas.
In his opening address of Junoon Talks, Vice-Chancellor Prof. Zaidi said our youth is disoriented due to limited job opportunities in market, and in this situation, guidance of top entrepreneurs would act as lampposts to guide them to start thier own startups.
He said Allama Iqbal compared youth with "Shaheen" because the Shaheen is far-sighted, fearless and moving forward and Allama Iqbal wanted to see these attributes in the Muslim youth.
He said there are three very basic principles on which human life flourishes i.e. diversity, curiosity and creativity, but very unfortunately they are contradicted by a culture of education that is currently prevalent in our country.
In his address, Salim Ghauri, the CEO of NetSol Technologies, told students that the world has become a global village, and there is large number of opportunities available for youth in the digital space, and they just need right skills and guidance to tap these opportunities.
He said they don't see grades while recruiting young graduates, and what matters to them is passion i.e. "junoon". He shared his success journey, saying that "never fear failures."
Nabeen Qadeer said that there are many failures behind every success but they often remained in shadow. "People see our success but our failures matter most because we learnt from them," he added.
He stressed that it is important to talk about these failures so that our youth can understand the process of success.
Fatima Asad said that the journey of leadership starts from the home and highlighted the importance of family values.
The talks of Umar Qamar, the Co-Founder of Export leftovers, and Maha Khalid the Co-Founder of 24Seven.pk, were also highly appreciated by students.