With an aim to provide exposure to the start-up culture to the students who have opted for entrepreneurship at MICA, Ahmedabad, the institute has introduced an entrepreneurship tour for its students.
A total of 15 students of first-year from PGP(PGDM-C/PGDM) visited incubation centres across the city such as Gujarat University Start-up and Entrepreneurship Council (GUSEC), , allevents.in — a MICA incubated start-up, and LEAF (Leadership, Entrepreneurship and Acceleration Foundation), GLS University incubator.
The idea of this tour was to understand the concept of incubation centres.
Prof UT Rao, Chairperson, MICA incubator, said: “Entrepreneurship and ideation is something that cannot be done in classrooms. The aim is to make the students understand the kind of support an entrepreneur gets from incubation centres, understand government schemes that promote start-ups and understand the design thinking process an entrepreneur goes through. All of this is only possible when students directly interact with the incubation centres and entrepreneurs.”
The start-up ecosystem
The students interacted with the founders of Published Books, Booz, Episodic Labs, Odinub, Dataone Innovation Labs, Growth Foundation, and eChai.
The visit to every incubation centre started with a brief presentation with the director, office visit and an open interactive session with the entrepreneurs.
Sharing his experience, MICA student Ashwin Jayakumar said, “The exposure to the existing start-up ecosystem and the stories of different entrepreneurs has widened our perspectives. We have a renewed zest to follow our start-up ideas.”
Jayesh Gavande, another student said, “I was not aware that there has been so much support for start-ups in Gujarat. The interaction has motivated me to take my idea forward without much of a worry. We were exposed to the pitching of ideas to the funding aspect.”