Entrepreneurial revolution in Chennai colleges

C Shivakumar

Chennai:

An entrepreneurship revolution is slowly being nurtured in the classrooms as new start-ups are mushrooming in college campuses around Chennai.

Currently, there are 62 startups in the colleges in the city which are nurtured by the institutes along with National Entrepreneurship Network, says Vishnu Priya,senior manager consulting of National Entrepreneurship Network in Chennai.

The main aim of NEN is to penetrate the classrooms to nurture the young entrepreneurs. And they have been quite successful to an extent with the help of entreprenuership cells in the colleges. These cells help kickstart the entrepreneurship spirit among the students in the colleges with the help of faculties.

Interestingly, some colleges like MOP Vaishnav College has been in the forefront in nurturing the entrepreneurship spirit among the students, says Rosy Frenando, a former head of the department of commerce in the college and now a NEN consultant.

She says MOP Vaishnav College pioneered the programme on entreprenuership in campus. “The focus was to educate faculty in college so that they can speak about entrepreneurship education.

“We trained the faculty, who in turn identified entrepreneur student leaders in a bid to ignite the thought of entrepreneurship among students,” says Rosy along with her colleague Krithika during a entrepreneurship workshop being conducted in the campus.

Interestingly, MOP has a series of start-ups, which include floral bouquets, MOP Health and Beauty (beauty parlour), MOP Beyond Breads (Cafeteria) and these all happened through incubation, says Rosy.

Interestingly, the initiative is no cakewalk for NEN as there are numerous challenges faced by the proponents of entrepreneurship in institutes. Sometimes, it is the parents who want their children to focus more on studies rather than on trying to be an entrepreneur and at times it is the institute who are afraid that the students would fare poorly in the exams.

But then NEN along with the Tata’s have been successful in kindling the entrepreneurship spirit among the youngsters. “Across the nation we have nearly 461 startups,” says Priya.

To a query on the lifespan of these start-ups, Priya says it is hard to come out with a figure although on an average some have a life span of two to three years and some have mushroomed into big firms providing employment to many people.

“The question is not how many are successful but the aim is to nurture the youngsters in entrepreneurship besides equipping them to face the challenges in the real life,” says Priya.

Interestingly, it is not only in MOP Vaishnav college but also in KCG College of Technology, Ethiraj College, Women’s Christian College and Shahsul Jain College among other institutes where start-up are mushrooming, says Rosy.