The Hindu : Front Page : Shaastra looking for young entrepreneurs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Oct 04, 2006
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Shaastra looking for young entrepreneurs

Sandhya Soman

The aim is to turn students into `job creators' and not `job-seekers'

CELEBRATING SPIRIT OF SCIENCE: Students trying out a mine detector robot during Shaastra 2005 in IIT Madras. — File photo

CHENNAI: Thousands of students who turn up for Shaastra 2006 at IIT-Madras this week will learn the basics of entrepreneurship.

The five-day technology mela, starting on Wednesday, celebrates the "spirit of engineering." It encourages students to transform their bright ideas to viable business ventures. The meet adopts a two-pronged plan: `National Business Plan Competition' and `Entrepreneurship Workshop'.

Ten teams have been short-listed for the Rs. 3 lakh prize, say organisers. The workshop will have four CEOs talking on product innovation and intellectual property issues, "important for those who want to get into start-ups," says student-president Amit Deshwal.

Ganapathy Subramanian, CEO, Cosmic Circuits; Raju Venkatraman, COO, ICICI; Santhanam, MD, Saint Gobain, and officials from GE will talk on venture funding and manufacturing from the scratch. The aim is to turn some of them into `job creators' and not `job-seekers.'

Unwilling to take risks

Mr. Amit says despite awareness, Indian students, unlike their overseas counterparts, are wary of "taking risks." "I had been to Stanford University in the U.S. last year for a conference on entrepreneurship. There were a couple of former students, who had come back to give a lecture on their two-year-old software firm, which had a turnover of over two million dollars. If they can do it in the U.S., why can't we in India," he asks.

The workshop will have a panel discussion on the Indian situation. The workshop and competition are organised by the Indian chapter of ASES, a global entrepreneurship society, and IIT-M's entrepreneurship cell C-Tides.

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