Great Lakes Institute of Management, Chennai, in association with Atal Innovation Mission, launched AIC-Great Lakes Balachandran Incubator (AGBI) within its campus. Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) is a flagship initiative set up by the NITI Aayog to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in the country.
Dr R Ramanan, Mission Director, AIM, NITI Aayog, said: “The Atal Innovation Mission is important because we are a country of 1.3 billion people, we have over 1.5 million schools, we have 10,500 engineering institutes and a similar number of management schools and universities. There are over 39,000 colleges and over 115 million students who will enter the workplace over the next 5-10 years. We have, what they call, a demographic dividend, an advantage other countries envy us for.”
He said: “Technology is changing with the way you are experiencing the world, and the way the world is experiencing you. You have a convergence of three important things - demographic dividend, a fast-growing economy and technology which has become affordable, available, accessible and advanced.”
“If you not pursuing innovation and entrepreneurship, you are losing a big opportunity to make an impact,” Dr Ramanan said.
Further self-employment
Dr TV Somanathan, IAS, Principal Secretary, Planning and Development, Government of Tamil Nadu, said: “Entrepreneurship is everywhere and it can be at any level, but what Atal Innovation Mission and Self-Employment and Talent Utilisation (SETU) does is to scale it up, both in terms of financing and the kind of enterprises the government promotes to further self-employment.”
“Today, because of AIM, India ranks third in the number of business incubators, after China and the US. Successful incubators have played a vital role in developing new ventures, and in turn, these ventures contribute significantly to economic growth. We all know that one of India’s biggest challenges is creating productive employment, and successful new enterprises can provide a large part of the answer to this challenge,” Dr Somanathan said.
Dr Bala V Balachandran, Founder, Chairman and Dean Emeritus, Great Lakes Institute of Management, said: “We are different, and thus, we make a difference and now we deliver the difference, with the help of Atal Innovation Mission and the Tamil Nadu government.”
Mohan Lakhamraju, Vice-Chairman and CEO, Great Lakes Institute of Management, said that the institute has made a mark in just 16 years, because it has always embraced innovation.
Dr Suresh Ramanathan, Dean and Principal, Great Lakes Institute of Management; Shailendra Tipparaju, Vice-Chairman, Advisory Board-AGBI; and Arvind Purushothaman, SVP and Head-Data Analytics and Cloud, Virtusa; were among the dignitaries present.