The SNDT Women’s University will set up a pre-incubation centre to help students convert potential ideas into viable start-ups.
The public university has also developed a dedicated start-up policy to encourage entrepreneurship on its campus among students and faculty.
While the university already has an incubation centre which supports start-ups that are already registered, the pre-incubation centre is expected to work as a launch-pad for students where the university will identify potential ideas and provide a platform for them to connect with relevant industry players to obtain required support to create a start-up.
The university, on November 9, is going to hold Innovation Mahakumbha 2025, which will be a platform to bring together universities, industries and innovators, based on the idea of the pre-incubation centre.
Vice-Chancellor of SNDT University Prof Ujwala Chakradeo, said, “Several innovative ideas do come up with students working on curricular and extra-curricular projects. Some of these concepts are start-up potential, but cannot always head toward that direction in absence of support required for aspects such as registration, patenting, creating a business plan among others which are vital to form a start-up to later seek funding and grow at the incubation centre. The pre-incubation centre will provide support at the nascent stage of any concept.”
Further highlighting the emphasis on entrepreneurship under the National Education Policy (NEP), Prof Chakradeo said that entrepreneurship can be encouraged on campuses by offering attractive incentives for the same such as credits for students, certifications for faculty members which can help in their promotions.
“All this can be implemented with help of a start-up policy which is now ready and pending for final approvals,” she said.
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The university has developed a dedicated course of seven days for training of faculty members to identify potential start-up ideas by students and help them reach the pre-incubation centre by developing the concept.
In its first run, the university trained 200 faculty members who then reached out to around 20,000 students across campuses of SNDT University and affiliated colleges. This led to as many as 1,500 ideas were pitched to be developed as start-ups.
Following scrutiny of these proposals, 110 innovative ideas are now shortlisted to be presented at the Innovation Mahakumbha 2025.