AICTE panel to push Startup India in engg colleges

Sanjay Inamdar, a first generation entrepreneur and grass-root innovator from Maharashtra, has been made the chairman of a committee to support students of technical institutes start their own company.

The panel set up by the Centre seeks to boost Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Start Up India, Stand up India” programme.

Kochi start-up village chairman Sanjay Vijayakumar, who played a key role in setting up India’s first technology business incubator on the PPP model in Kerala, and director of the Gujarat Technical University’s (GTU) innovation council Hiranmay Mahanta have been appointed members in the five-member panel.

The national implementation committee has been set up by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) as part of the startup India plan, unveiled by the Centre in January.

Inamdar, who is also a member of board of governors at the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP) as well as co-founder of the BHAU Institute of Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Leadership, had played a key role in the formulation of ‘Start up India Plan’. “In line with the national policy, the AICTE has formulated a startup policy to unleash the innovation and startup potential of the students enrolled in various degree programmes in technical institutes across the country. The policy emphasises that students can be given opportunity to start their own companies and become job creators,” official sources told DH.

The committee, headed by Inamdar, will evaluate the startup proposals to be coming from the students and approve them in close coordination with the Niti Ayog, department of science and technology, department of industrial policy and promotion and the state governments concerned.

The panel will work out a plan for a time-bound execution of pedagogic interventions for students to enable them think of undertaking startup projects. It will also make efforts to help technical institutes “fine tune” their pre-incubation model so that their students’ projects can take off without any glitches.

“The AICTE start-up policy has stressed that students must be given an early exposure to entrepreneurship. For such exposure, certain pedagogical intervention has to be made, which would introduce many skills that students may not be able to cultivate in regular classroom teaching. This will help students to become more innovative and entrepreneurial,” sources added.

The committee will also launch an AICTE startup portal to make the entire process online, from submission of proposals to their clearance.

“The panel has been mandated to push forward the student startup movement as a key goal of the decade,” sources added.
DH News Service