By Rusen Kumar
MADURAI: SAP Labs India and Native Lead Foundation (NLF) today announced that their partnership which began in July, 2013, has spurred over 200 business ideas from students in 19 engineering colleges across South Tamil Nadu.
NLF works with educational institutions, students, and aspiring entrepreneurs to create awareness, motivate, train, and prepare them to become innovators and business leaders. Under the partnership, SAP Labs India and NLF worked with colleges in Tamil Nadu under two programs – SPARK, aimed to motivate and expose students on the concepts of innovation, intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship; and Start-up Nursery, designed to give students and staff a real-time feel of a start-up incubation center on campus.
Speaking at an event in Madurai hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with NLF and SAP on the topic of “Fostering an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in South Tamil Nadu”, R. Dinesh, Joint Managing Director, TVS & Sons Ltd and Chief Mentor of Native Lead Foundation said, “As more engineers graduate from academic institutions across the state and country, it has been the endeavor of NLF to inspire the next generation to experiment with new ideas and to gain access to capital to grow those ideas. Through NLF’s partnership with SAP we will encourage and motivate students in the region to embrace innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship for a better future for themselves and the country.”
51 workshops at 19 colleges under the SPARK initiative were held and almost 9000 students were exposed to the principles of innovation, intrapreneurship, and entrepreneurship. Following this, through the Start-up Nursery, 500 students were selected to create business ideas under the guidance of 15 mentors who finally shortlisted 27 business ideas for further development.
As part of its three-year plan that began in 2013, NLF will engage with organizations and sensitize 100,000 youth from 100 educational institutions on entrepreneurship, with the objective of creating 50 brands.
