Entrepreneurship Week India from 6 Feb 2010

Entrepreneurship Week India(E Week) the unique week-long campaign to build awareness and support for entrepreneurship, will be celebrated across the country from 6 to 13 February 2010. E Week is supported by the Wadhwani Foundation and run by the National Entrepreneurship Network(NEN). E Week activities are led by more than 500 NEN academic institutes and 400 plus NEN student entrepreneurship Cells (E Cells) across 30 cities.

By far the largest entrepreneurship activity in the country, E Week’s dramatic results in the past – building support for entrepreneurs – is encouraging ever more participation. This year’s E Week is set to engage 5,00,000 participants, up from 3,50,000 last year. E Week will see active involvement of more than 30 organisations that support entrepreneurship, corporate, business leaders, experts, non-profit leaders, and faculty leaders to inspire, encourage, guide, and mentor students.

Laura A. Parkin, Executive Director, NEN & Wadhwani Foundation said, “This will be the fourth E Week India, and it’s gearing up to be the biggest yet. Especially significant is this year’s theme – ‘India: Opportunities Within’. India faces daunting challenges across many sectors: water, healthcare, energy, education, waste management, transportation and more. As pressure mounts and the costs of technologies drop, these challenges provide enormous entrepreneurial opportunities. This year’s E Week theme is to focus attention of the next generation of entrepreneurs on these often-overlooked opportunities.”

During E Week, participants in and out of campuses across the country – students, parents, friends and key members of the community will take the E Week Pledge and engage in thousands of events – an array of fun, experiential and knowledge building activities - focused on the E Week theme. These include competitions, expositions, educational movies screening, leadership and motivation talks with successful entrepreneurs, panel discussions and knowledge sharing sessions with experts, business plan and skill building workshops, business and tech bazaars, industry visits, mentoring sessions, live case studies, awareness campaigns and innovative projects.

Participants can take part in E Week India through a variety of ways – online and offline. NEN invites online registrations by visiting http://eweek.nenonline.org/. Participants may also organise an activity, attend an Event, tell your friends about E Week India or download resources.

Highlighting the outcome of past E Weeks, Ms.Parkin said, “E Week has proved to be an effective platform to inspire support for entrepreneurship among individuals and institutions.” She cited examples: “When Trichy’s J J College of Engineering approached All India Radio to publicize E Week in 2008, it was meant only for a week. But it is a collaboration that continues till today. AIR conducts special entrepreneurship programs with the support of the institute every three months, reaching out to 34,00,000 people. These shows are popular: they get calls from women entrepreneurs to students to farmers wanting to launch ventures.”

“Naya Nandargi was introduced to entrepreneurship during E Week 2008. She was hooked. And when her mother saw Naya’s growing excitement and skills, she became a keen supporter. Naya’s mom even encouraged her to leave her MNC job and start something of her own!”

E Week will culminate on 13 February 2010 with a gala Awards Ceremony at Bangalore. NEN Member Institutes will be chosen for the E Week India 2010 Championship Awards as well as 2 Special Awards: 1) for the Most Innovative Event 2) Most Effective Public Awareness Campaign. Student representatives of the Award winners will be flown to Bangalore for the gala Awards Ceremony attended by students from various institutes, eminent people from industry and government.