The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Management students win international acclaim

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 25, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Management students win international acclaim

Staff Reporter

Project identifies business chances for rural people They came up with a project aimed at identifying business opportunities for rural people

CHENNAI: Students of Bharathidasan Institute of Management, Tiruchi, have proved that projects prepared for competitions, besides winning international awards, can be implemented.

Named `Progreen', A team of four students, who looked for ideas for their business projects found that the human resource in rural areas was not adequately used. With an objective to improve the economic status of rural community, Santhosh Ramdoss, Deepak Kumar Bhatter, Anitha Parthasarathy and Anand Venkataraman, designed the project, `biodegradable leaf plates.' Presenting the project on Saturday, Santhosh said it aimed at identifying business opportunities for rural people and forming rural micro co-operatives.

This project won them the first place in Global Social Entrepreneurship Competition, conducted by the University of Washington, Seattle, in February 2005. They competed with 170 teams and won a cash prize of $5,000.

Elaborating on the project, Santhosh said that the raw material of biodegradable leaf tableware, areca sheath, was available in plenty in rural areas and had export potential. The team would be providing the missing link, helping the rural unemployed to set up small production units.

Radio was used to convey the idea, which brought Velmurugan from Samudram in Salem district willing to set up a unit. Santhosh said that Progreen would help in establishing such units and then move on to the next business idea.

The Rs. 80,000 investment for the unit at Samudram has been mobilised by Progreen, he said.

Project on employment

The next project that won them the Imagine Cup 2005 in Microsoft IT Business Plan category conducted at Yokohoma, Japan, was on employment to the educated rural youth through outsourced data entry and conversion services to Business Process Outsourcing companies. This won them a cash prize of $ 8,000. But the implementation is still in initial stages.

Anand Venkataraman said that the cash awards would be used to set up manufacturing units.

The institute director, M. Sankaran, said the award winning projects were a symbol of the culture of the institute, which developed social responsibility among the youth.

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