New Year Renews Indian Academia's Startup Fever Starting off 2023 on a good note, Indian universities, such as JMI, BHU, IIT Madras and others, are cultivating entrepreneurship with renewed vigour as several insightful seminars and programmes have already been held in January alone
By Soumya Duggal •
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Starting off 2023 on a good note, Indian universities and colleges appear to be cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship with renewed vigour as several insightful seminars and programmes for the same have been held in January alone. Take Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), for instance, whose centre for innovation and entrepreneurship, on Tuesday, organised an entrepreneurship development program (EDP) to promote startups, innovation and budding entrepreneurs on the campus.
Additionally, JMI also organised a startup founders meet, which was partaken in by over 20 startups and 30 entrepreneurs. "The centre vows to keep conducting such events to promote and foster the startup and innovation culture in and around the university campus and to develop the Jamia community," said a JMI press statement.
In a similar boost to the startup ecosystem, on January 16, the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JKEDI) organized a day-long workshop to celebrate the National Startup Day and build a strong and inclusive ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship in the union territory. Notably, a few days prior, an innovation club at the IGNOU Srinagar Regional Centre was constituted to facilitate various activities such as brainstorming sessions, presentations, workshops, guidance and counselling throughout the year to foster a culture of innovation and startups among learners at the university.
Additionally, last week, Dr Garima Jain, a scientist working on cancer genomics at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) was awarded a grant for her startup, mirNOW, under the Amrit Grand Challenge Programme, funded by the ministry of science and technology. Her startup is working to develop tests for early, actionable, and personalized diagnoses for cancer and cardiovascular diseases, with the objective of making these solutions accessible to all, stated BHU.
Across the country, the Indian academia is accelerating its efforts to create a synergy among various stakeholders in the startup ecosystem, such as entrepreneurs, investors, researchers and policymakers. Down south, in Chennai, IIT Madras' Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande centre for innovation and entrepreneurship recently hosted a seminar on 'Sparking a Lab to Market Transformation in India with Deep-tech startups', aiming to generate ideas and debate on avenues to commercialise translational research and create socio-economic impact through deep-tech startups. Apart from students, researchers and faculty, the seminar also addressed angel investors, venture capital fund managers, incubator managers, startup mentors and founders of early-stage startups.
