PUNE Competitions on ideation are necessary if we really think startups need to flourish,” said Abhay Jere, chief innovation officer, ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India on Monday.
“It’s not about ideas, but the execution of the idea, right kind of product, design and appropriate design thinking needed,” he added.
Jere was speaking at the opening ceremony of the cluster-level Innovation-to-Enterprise competition (i-2-e) at Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU).
The competition has been organised by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Enterprise at SPPU and a total of 103 colleges are participating.
A total of 3,090 students will be participating through innovation and startup cells constituted at the college level, represented by 1,500 teams.
The top two teams will be part of a competition to be hosted where 13 different clusters in Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik will compete.
A total of 206 teams are participating in this round and top 13 teams will go to the final round.
The final round will be conducted in January 2020.
{{/usCountry}}The final round will be conducted in January 2020.
{{/usCountry}}Students in the competition have access to free online content of 80 hours to help them understand the startup space.
The inaugural programme saw NS Umarnani, pro-vice-chancellor presiding over the function, with Jere as the chief guest. Apoorva Palkar, director, Innovation, Incubation and Linkages and Prafulla Pawar, SPPU registrar were also present at the event.
Umarani said, “University has chosen timely startups to build Startup culture in colleges through i-2-e ideation competition. Palkar provided background on why these competitions are being organised to focus on the abilities of students to develop logical, critical and analytical thinking at the same time looking at developing confidence in individuals to drive an idea into a scalable enterprise.”