Hyderabad: In an effort to promote entrepreneurship among students in government-run institutions as well, the State of Telangana is looking at several initiatives. While the institutions like TASK and T-Hub are doing their bit to take this idea forward, the government is also stepping up. Osmania University already has an incubator called the Technology Business Incubator and now authorities have started promoting the concept of entrepreneurship in degree colleges as well.
Speaking at an event here on Tuesday, Telangana Commissioner of Technical and Collegiate Education Navin Mittal said, “The government has started over 100 entrepreneurship development cells this year in government degree colleges. This idea came after we realised that we need job creators as well and the most of the focus has been on technology entrepreneurs and engineering colleges for the same. And for that we have highly successful incubators like the T-Hub, which is one of the largest in the country, in Telangana.”
However, he added that not much was being done for lakhs of students studying in degree colleges in the State and that is how the entrepreneurship development cell came into being. According to Mittal, this is the first-of-its-kind incubator to be set up in a government degree college and they have also partnered with TiE Grad programme to provide support. “The government is also looking at ways in which we can enhance this programme even further with more collaborations and partnerships with other institutions and incubators,” he said at the launch of EThames College’s launch of EThames Labz, an incubation programme for degree college students.
EThames ELabZ
With an aim to provide the right kind of support to non-technology student entrepreneurs, Hyderabad-based EThames College has launched a first-of-its-kind incubator for degree college students. Called the EThames ELabZ that is being launched in partnership with TiE and IIIT Hyderabad, the incubator will inspire degree college students and introduce them to the world of entrepreneurship. The programme was launched on Tuesday by Telangana Commissioner of Technical and Collegiate Education Navin Mittal, TiE Global vice-chairman and TiE Hyderabad president Suresh Raju, IIIT Hyderabad Head of CIE Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, and EThames College chairman Kali Prasad. With the sole objective to enable students to pursue entrepreneurship through a series of programmes and activities that will progressively channel students’ entrepreneurial energies, EThames college has launched this exclusive incubation program. The programme aims to incubate 1,000 student startups in the next ten years and plans to have 50 startups at any given point in time. “The programme will have a fund corpus of Rs 1 crore by the second year and we aim to fund 10 new startups every year with up to Rs 10 lakh for each startup. We are also looking at graduating 30 student startups by the end of the third year,” says Kali Prasad.
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