AI Workshop in Kolkata: 100+ Women Entrepreneurs at ICBI

I led Future Unlocked: An AI Masterclass for more than 100 women entrepreneurs in Kolkata. The event was organised by the International Chamber of Business & Industry (ICBI) Women's Wing under its V-Learn banner. The feedback was very positive, and I am grateful to everyone who joined us.

One of my slides made a blunt point: vague prompts lead to vague results. That matters when the result is going to a customer. An invented delivery promise is a problem even if the sentence sounds convincing.

Below, I have expanded that lesson into four take-home exercises adapted from my teaching materials. They use a fictional gifting business so you can follow the whole process. Replace its details with your own verified information when you try the prompts.

1. Write the business facts before you ask for a caption

When someone asks AI to “write a good post for my business”, the tool has to fill in most of the brief. I would spend a few minutes assembling the facts first. You can reuse that work for customer replies, captions and proposals.

Here is the brief for our fictional Kolkata gifting business:

• Each gift box contains a notebook, a candle and a printed thank-you card.
• The minimum order is 10 boxes.
• A company name can be printed on the card. Other customisation has not been confirmed.
• Orders are available for collection in Kolkata.
• The lead time is seven working days after artwork approval.
• Prices and delivery arrangements have not been provided.

That last line belongs in the brief. Missing information is something the owner needs to resolve.

Copy the brief into your chat, then try this:

Using only the business facts above, draft a WhatsApp reply to this enquiry:
“Can I order 12 boxes with my company name and have them delivered next week?”

Keep the reply under 70 words. Use plain, friendly English. Do not promise a price, delivery service or deadline that the brief does not confirm. Ask one question that helps us take the order forward. List any other information I need to confirm separately.

Here is an example reply:

We can include your company name on the thank-you card for an order of 12 boxes. Our lead time is seven working days after artwork approval, with collection in Kolkata. I'll need to confirm delivery and the price. What date do you need the boxes?

Notice how it preserves the limited customisation and the lead-time condition. The owner's separate checklist should still include the price, delivery availability and charges, the requested date and the timing of artwork approval.

If your first draft begins with “We are thrilled to bring your vision to life”, give it a specific correction:

Remove the promotional opening. Keep the reply under 60 words. Preserve every product fact and condition. Keep one clear question at the end.

“Make it better” leaves the problem undefined. Here, you have named the part you want changed and the facts that must survive the edit. That is the useful habit behind the refinement exercises in my ChatGPT material.

2. Build a customer FAQ from your own documents

Before asking NotebookLM to answer customer questions, assemble the documents it should use. This exercise gives you a set of answers you can trace back to your own policies.

Collect your current product sheet, ordering policy and a short document of customer questions. Remove names, phone numbers and other identifying details from those questions. Add the files to your notebook and select the sources relevant to the task.

If you are practising with our fictional example, save the business brief above as a text file and add it as a source.

Use a prompt like this:

Using the selected sources, answer these customer questions:
1. What comes in the gift box?
2. Can I order fewer than 10?
3. Where can my company name appear?
4. How long does an order take?
5. Is delivery included?

Return a table with the question, a short answer, its supporting source citation and anything the owner must confirm. If the sources do not answer a question, write “Not stated in the supplied sources”. Flag conflicting policies instead of choosing one silently.

Open the citations and read the supporting passages. Google's notebook chat documentation explains how citations let you inspect the source behind an answer. A citation is useful because you can check it; the presence of one does not finish the checking for you.

These two illustrative answers use the fictional brief above. Your actual notebook should also cite the documents you upload:

Once you have checked the answers, you have material for your website FAQ, a saved customer reply and a short social post. For example, “What can we personalise?” can become a post showing the printed card. It answers a buying question using a product detail you can demonstrate.

I would do this before asking for a 30-day content calendar. Otherwise, you may end up scheduling a month's worth of posts around an offer you have not explained properly.

3. Create a product ad that matches what you sell

An ad brief needs the product, layout and exact words. Asking for a “premium, high-converting creative” leaves those decisions open.

Start with a clear photograph of the actual product. Decide where the headline and next step will go before generating the background. Here is a brief for the same gifting business:

Use my uploaded gift-box photo as the product reference. Create a portrait 4:5 ad layout with the box on the right and uncluttered space on the left for text.

Keep the visible products, quantities, packaging and colours consistent with the reference. Use a simple tabletop and soft daylight. Do not add products, logos, badges, prices, discounts or text. Do not show customisation that is absent from the reference.

The purpose is to show the gift box clearly and leave room for a headline and enquiry instruction.

Add the words in a design editor after you have approved the visual. For this example, the copy could be:

• Headline: Thank-you gifts for your team
• Detail: Your company name on the card. Minimum 10 boxes.
• Next step: Ask about collection and lead times

Now compare the result with the original photo. Count the items. Check the candle label, the notebook's appearance, the packaging and proportions. If the generated image changes what the customer would receive, use the original product photo in the layout.

For a service business, the composition lesson still applies. Place an approved portrait on one side of a banner and leave the other side clear for the service message. Inspect any generated portrait edit against the original before using it.

When you want a second version, change one element. Try a headline answering “What's in the box?” while keeping the product image and offer the same. You will have a clearer comparison than if you change the audience, image, price and headline together.

4. Give the draft a separate review

Treat research, drafting and review as separate tasks, with a saved output from each. This makes it easier to see where a wrong detail entered the work.

Keep a small working folder with the approved business brief, source documents, selected product photo and drafts. Give each task a clear output:

1. Research: list the facts supported by the source documents and the questions still open.
2. Writing: draft the customer reply, FAQ and ad copy from the approved facts.
3. Review: compare those drafts with the original brief and identify specific corrections.

If you use Claude Cowork for file work, give it access to a dedicated practice folder containing copies. Anthropic's Cowork guidance explains why limiting file access matters. Keep the original files backed up and ask it to show its plan before changing anything.

For the review, try this prompt with the source brief and draft attached:

Review this draft against the approved business brief. Do not rewrite it yet.

Check product details, minimum quantities, customisation, prices, deadlines, delivery claims and the enquiry instruction. Check whether any important condition disappeared during rewriting.

For each issue, quote the draft's wording, identify the source fact or missing evidence, and suggest the smallest correction. Flag unsupported claims for the owner. Do not add statistics, testimonials or promises to strengthen the copy. Do not publish or send anything.

A useful review would catch “Free delivery next week” because our brief confirms neither free delivery nor that deadline. “Looks good” is not enough. You need to see what was checked and where the answer came from.

The second pass can still miss an error. Having AI write a draft and then review it does not create independent evidence. The business owner needs to make the final comparison with the source documents.

How to tell whether the exercise helped

Pick one recurring task and compare it with the way you normally do it. For a customer reply, note:

• The time needed to reach a version you would actually send, including corrections.
• The facts or conditions that needed fixing.
• Whether you used the result, and what you still had to write yourself.

For content, also record the relevant questions and enquiries it produces. A faster first draft is useful only if the finished work is accurate and helps the business. I would keep the brief and review notes alongside the final version, so the next attempt starts with what you have learned.

Planning an AI workshop for your organisation

The ICBI masterclass brought together women entrepreneurs. For a company, I would build the exercises around the work of the people attending. A sales team might need a checked proposal; a marketing team might need an approved campaign brief and ad draft.

Before booking, ask what participants will practise, what source material they should bring and how they will check their output. Those questions tell you more about the usefulness of a session than the number of tools on the agenda.

Explore my AI corporate training in Kolkata or the wider corporate AI training programmes. For a team in India, the UAE or joining online, email me about your workshop with your organisation, group size, location, preferred dates and one recurring task you want the team to handle better.