Inspiring students to pursue entrepreneurship

EThames College aims to provide experiential learning through industry connect, has announced their flagship incubation programme 'EThames ELabZ'. With an objective to seed the idea of pursuing entrepreneurship in students' mind, in partnership with well-reputed startup ecosystem players like TiE and IIIT Hyderabad. The programme was launched by Navin Mittal, IAS Commissioner of Technical and Collegiate Education, Govt of Telangana, Murali Bukkapatnam, Vice Chairman TiE Global, Suresh Raju, President, TiE Hyderabad, Prof Ramesh Loganathan, Head of CIE, IIIT Hyderabad and Kali Prasad, Chairman – EThames College, here in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

India has the third-largest ecosystem for start-ups in the world and is expected to witness rapid YoY annual growth of more than 15%. As enterprises realise the disruptive potential of start-ups and more and more VCs are eager to invest in them, there are unlimited opportunities for the student to take up entrepreneurship at a very early age and realise their dreams.

"We are privileged to launch EThames ELabZ in collaboration with our esteemed partners TiE and IIIT Hyderabad. In order to inspire the students and instill the spirit of entrepreneurship at a young age, we have developed first-of-its-kind innovative programme EThames ElabZ, for Non-Engineering students" - said Kali Prasad Gadiraju, Chairman – EThames College

"While we have witnessed incubation programmes developed at Universities and Engineering colleges, this is the first time, we are introducing incubation programme at the graduation level that focuses on inspiring the students to build consumer brands and brick and motor companies which will create more employment."

EThames ELabZ programme was designed by industry experts keeping in mind the students' ability to think, grasp and perform so as to meet the intricacies of a good startup. The program flow of EThames ELabZ is as follows -

l Inspire – Creating awareness and inspiring students to pursue entrepreneurship through outreach meetups, motivational talks, and AMA sessions etc.

l Foundation – Deliver basic know-how on entrepreneurship through customer designed course curriculum; combining with Coursea and TiE programs

l Discover – Creating a community of students with innovative ideas through student-led e-clubs, organizing hackathons, startup idea pitching competitions etc

l Idea-validation – Provide a framework to develop ideas through idea validation bootcamps, structured short mentorship programmes and sessions from entrepreneurs

l Seeding – Support students develop their ideas and support through small seed fund

l Nurture – Help students advance from an idea to a business by providing office space, legal and secretarial services, labs etc and Pre-incubation programme