Gujarat Technological University (GTU) will launch country’s largest ‘student start-up’ literacy programme through Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on August 15 this year. Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan will give the commencement address. About 50,000 students are expected to benefit from this programme annually.
Giving this information, GTU’s in-charge vice-chancellor Rajul Gajjar said that this free of charge programme would help students to learn how students across the globe had done inspiring efforts and created technology innovation driven starts-ups in their colleges.
She said that this programme would enable students to convert their final year projects into a ‘start-up’ thus contributing to creation of jobs and improve the economy.
Director of GTU’s Innovation Council Hiranmay Mahanta, who is the brain behind ‘start-up’ programmes in the university, told media persons that one of the key objectives of the programme was to see entrepreneurship training or exposure as an alternative vehicle of skill development. “Even if the students try hands and fail in their college days, it will equip them with modern skill sets which academic environment does not teach,” said Mahanta.
He felt that in a country like India with over 50 lakh students across 700 plus universities, democratization of start-up movement would revolutionize innovation and can take the country in the league of developed nations.
GTU is India’s first large-scale state technology university which is making pioneering efforts towards developing a strong student start-up culture across its 500 plus campuses.
Recently GTU became the first state technical university in the country to get a full-fledged Technology Business Incubator (TBI) from NSTEDB, Government of India.
Mahanta said that this programme would share success stories of unique student start-ups from across the countries in the world and also share about start-up ecosystem in India.
While the programme will be mandatory for all third semester students, it can be availed of by all other students who want to benefit from this. This programme will also create virtual interface between successful start-ups in Silicon Valley and GTU students.
Note: News shared for public awareness with reference from the information provided at online news portals.
