The Hindu : National : IIT Kharagpur to set up entrepreneurship school

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Saturday, Dec 29, 2007
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IIT Kharagpur to set up entrepreneurship school

Staff Reporter

Kolkata: With the aim of honing the skills of budding entrepreneurs, the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, is setting up a school of entrepreneurship.

The school would become functional in 2008 or 2009, said its Director D. Acharya at a press conference here on Friday. It was the first of its kind in the country, he added.

While the students would be admitted to the entrepreneurship course through the regular IIT-JEE, they would be awarded two degrees — a Bachelor of Technology and a Master of Entrepreneurship — at the completion of the course. Fifty per cent of the cost of introducing the course would be borne by Vinod Mehta, an alumnus.

The IIT authorities were planning to admit about 30 students for the five-year course. “The course will target students from financially secure backgrounds who are not looking for jobs,” Prof. Acharya said. It was meant for potential employment generators who could accelerate the process of development and not employment seekers, he added.

Viable ideas

The students, who will be individually nurtured under the expert guidance of two mentors, will have to produce a commercially viable idea before the course ends.

With the target of doubling the student intake from 7,000 within the next five years, the institute was also augmenting its infrastructure and creating capacity with investments worth Rs.396 crore, said Sanjeev Goenka, Chairman, Board of Governors, IIT Kharagpur. “In another 10 years time, we hope to take in at least 24,000 students,” he said.

Two hundred new classrooms would be built in two phases for the purpose, apart from making additional accommodation facilities for students.

Two centres — one on infrastructural design and management and the other on telecommunication engineering — were also being set up.

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