Training to handle business? Learn directly from those who do it, 365 days a year.

Students Entrepreneurship Cell of XLRI, which organised an interactive event IdeaKon on Sunday, got real-time business lessons from five entrepreneurs.

Speakers for IdeaKon were Pharmeasy founder Dhaval Shah, Housing.com founder Jaspreet Singh Saluja, Medinfi Healthcare founder Ravi Shankar Mishra, Fashionove co-founder Sharad Kumar and Asian Fox Developments founder and CEO Ayaan Chawla.

All the five trailblazers inspired some 100 management students from XLRI about the excitements and challenges of running businesses, especially start-ups.

In the four-hour long interactive session, which began on 2pm and ended around 6pm on XLRI campus, students went beyond business management books to learn from the entrepreneurs who came from diverse industry segments, including how they started, the journey ever since and their personal learnings.

Ravi Shankar Mishra, who founded Medinfi Healthcare, which through a web and mobile app, makes it easier for people to discover and book appointments with doctors and hospitals of their choice, had a simple tip to give.

"I always go by the thought, love to learn, love to fail. If there is a failure in your start-up, there is nothing to worry. In fact you should always take a lesson from it and perform better," Mishra said.

"The purpose behind IdeaKon, which is on its second year, is to bring variety to the platform and facilitate healthy talks to encourage the student fraternity at XLRI and other business institutes in starting their own business," said Ankit Mittal, an XLRI student from Student Entrepreneurship Development Cell.

"The idea is to let the listening students benefit from the experiences shared by people who have started their own businesses," he continued. "These experiences play a key role to inspire a number of B-school students to take the plunge and start an entrepreneurial venture. This event is also a great place for start-ups to connect with each other."

Ankit added that this was the second year of IdeaKon.

"We intend to make it big," he said. "It so happens that someone may have a business idea which is innovative but does not see the light of day. The programme intends to be a facilitator of such dreams. Here, established business leaders let aspiring entrepreneurs know how to convert a spark into a real start-up."