An Entrepreneurship school to be started in IIT Kharagpur to assist the Future Entrepreneurs

“IITians should not be job SEEKERS but be job CREATORS” this was the statement articulated by our greatest president of all time Mr. APJ Kalam. We see many of the graduates passing from IIT’s engaging themselves towards innovation and entrepreneurship. Many of the students embark on entrepreneurship during college time itself. Others wait for money to be poured in for investing in their innovation in order to hedge the risk associated with the entrepreneurship. Seeing the huge tendency amongst the student for getting into entrepreneurship, first time in the history of the world a graduate course dedicated to the sole purpose of the entrepreneurship is going to be started from next year itself. Welcome to “Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship” course of ‘Engineering Entrepreneurship’ here you will be taught all the practical difficulties to be faced by the young budding entrepreneurs.The agenda for establishing the school was the basic question which I am sure many of us will stammer while answering that why India is lagging behind from many industrial countries despite having a huge pool of talent and productive capability.  Why the ratio of the Indian companies to foreign companies in India is disappointingly poor? Or why the unemployment rate average in India despite being so rich in talent is at a high of 8.6%?

The new school will focus on product development and skill enhancement. This course will commence from the second year onwards and until fourth year in every semester there will be a subject related to this course. The added advantage of this course is that the final project of every student is expected to be a product and that can be well scrutinized by the skilled professionals along with the value addition imparted by them. The selection of the student for this course will be as per the JEE counseling,thus it will ensure that quality and ambitious student are selected for this course. The students are also eligible to participate in the placement and the project done by the student will act as an advertisement for the student’s talent. The option of deferred placement will be there so student will not face any mental pressure and will have sufficient time for developing their products. The grant of fund facility is there for the development of the product, infact for one product under the Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Park (STEP) funding of about INR 10 million was provided. The funding will be provided in the three stages, first stage is for pushing the product innovation and nothing else is expected from the student. The second and third stage consists of taking loan or raising the money from the market in the form of equity.  Thirty students are reported to be in the second year and the number is expected to go up in the next year. Many students who have opted for the deferred placement are working on the development of their product and none of them have reportedly taken placement till now. A reputed team consisting of Prof. Dhrubesh Biswas who is on invitation of Government of India to assist in the setting up of entrepreneurial hi-tech ventures in (Technology Inspired Products and Services)and a top notch professional team comprising of experts in this field will be assisting in making this programme a meaningful endeavor.

Contributed by Paramjeet Gupta