ECOSYSTEM IN EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
OBJECTIVES:
• To emphasize on the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship in the young Indian minds.
• To bring awareness of the avenues that could foster the innovative ideas and help with entrepreneurship.
• To educate about innovation in school learning as a base through young entrepreneurs’ and innovators’ journeys.
INTRODUCTION:
Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav is an initiative of the Government of India to celebrate and commemorate 75 years of progressive India and the glorious history of its people, culture and achievement. This Mahotsav is dedicated to the people of India who have not only been instrumental in bringing India thus far in its evolutionary journey but also hold within them the power and potential to enable Prime Minister Modi’s vision of activating India 2.0, fuelled by the spirit
of Atmanirbhar Bharat. Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav is an embodiment of all that is progressive about India’s socio-cultural, political and economic identity. The official journey of “Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav” commences on 12th March, 2021 which starts a 75-week countdown to our 75th anniversary of Independence and will end post a year on 15th August, 2023. As a part of this, on National Youth Day, the e-symposium on building innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem in educational institutions was arranged, were various panellists spoke on different topics related to innovation. And also, different keynote addresses were delivered.
DAY 1: 11/01/2022
INNAUGRAL SESSION:
The session started at 10:30am. Welcome address was addressed by Chairman of AICTE. Secretaries of department of (HE) Mo E, DPIIT-Mo C&I and (School)- Mo E addressed the session. The movie “Journey of Hackathon” was launched during the event. The program also announced the release of National Innovation and start-up Policy for Schools was done after the launch of the movie. In the meeting, the council felicitated the winners of ‘Manthan’. 75 Innovative Technologies with start-up potential ideas were selected by the council. They also presented the problem statement of ideas that was presented by each team. Then, they addressed the winners where they announced that the winners will be supported by 10000 faculties as a part of mentoring for moving forward with ideas that has been selected and will also get funding support. Council also said that they will be conducting similar events in the future and the winners will get the opportunity to present their ideas in the concerned industry. Moving forward, the
team announced their partnership between Toycathon and Toy industry. In this they announced the Toy Business League – aims to build a Aatmanirbhar Toyconomy. The partnership is focussed on building India into a Global Toy Hub. Later on, ‘Guest of Honour’ for the session, Honourable Shiksha Mantri, Mo E, ‘Chief guest’ Honorable Minister, Mo C &I addressed the audience. Finally, vote of thanks was presented by CIO, Mo E’s Innovation Cell.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS 1:
Speaker – Shri Sridhar Vembu, CEO- Zoho Corporation
The session started with the introduction about the speaker he shared thoughts on how to build entrepreneurship ecosystem and importance of spreading the culture of entrepreneurship He gave us insights on various aspects such as
- How to structure the system of education to promote culture of innovation in students
- Importance of having hands on experience on technology in this era and learning to work in teams
- Act of working together in small teams and building things is the fundamental of education and entrepreneurship.
He spoke about how they as a company have incorporated in Zoho. Continuously building projects is given more emphasis like building aps, websites etc. Next vital thing he spoke about is how to learn to sell. Without selling there is no buying as economy is all about exchange of goods. Next he briefed about certain important lessons which an entrepreneur should incorporate such as • leadership is all about setting an example and being a role model and lead from the front rather than controlling and commanding which does not work on a long run
• to not think about the credit and let go of the idea of taking credit is the key only by dissolving ego and expanding your boundary you can truly be a leader
• costly input and commodity output trap one of the major things to look out for especially for
entrepreneurs
• Long term orientation is very vital to sustain in a business and earn success.
It was a very informative session and got a lot of insights regarding the working style of the
entrepreneur.
PANEL DISCUSSION 1
Topic – innovation human value and sustainability
Panelist 1 – Harshit Rathore, CEO Noccarc robotics
Panelist 2 – Vikash Mittersain, Managing Director of Nazara technologies
Panelist 3 – Shrikanth Badve, Managing Director Badve industries
Moderator – Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman AICT
In this discussion we got to learn the importance of innovation, human values and sustainability and how these are incorporated in today’s education system Make an innovation that will not degrade or pose a threat to the existing environment What needs to be brought into this new age education system.
Balance between the both competition and collaboration is the key as competition cannot be fully eradicated
Vikash Mittersain views: The importance of innovation recognition and need for India to incorporate and work on research and development sector
Education system is lacking innovation there should be a revamp of the system
Student exchange programmes from a young age so that there is homogenous mix of culture,
education and people all around the world
Harshith rathore views– Difference between invention and innovation gave examples of huge
innovations in current era fast tag
Continuous innovation is necessary to sustain and be relevant in today’s age and following certain
values along with innovation is very important
Eradicating competition to an extent as this makes people think in only one direction constraining
people to see in other directions
Srikanth Badve views- small changes that makes a man’s life simple is called innovation
Create a platform for the student’s example -hackathon which recognizes budding entrepreneurs
Conclusion – how innovation should be nurtured, empowered and recognised rather than giving
importance to placements packages etc
KEYNOTE ADDRESS 2
Speaker – Goutam Kumar, Founder Fareye
Topic – innovation and entrepreneurship
He briefed us about his journey and importance of problem solving and understanding the customer needs it is one of the major skill required for entrepreneurs and how focusing on customer rather than competition is the key. He went on to give real life example on how Fareye as a company expanded globally in the ecommerce industry creating a value chain. They as a company are helping industries with the help of AI in understanding the consumer behaviour He went on to say that this is the right time for entrepreneurs to start up especially in the tech industry as there is a boom in this sector be it in the payment space or business post covid It was a very insightful session one of the major takeaway was building people is necessary as people build business
PANEL DISCUSSION 2:
Topic- Best innovation and start-up practices in HIEs (higher education institutions)
Panellist 1- Prof. Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur
Panellist 2- Prof. AB Pandit, Vice chancellor, ICT Mumbai
Panellist 3- Shri Rahul Nayar, Vice President, Invest India
Moderator- Dr K. Radhakrishan, Ex Chairman, ISRO
The main agenda of the discussion was to enlighten more about the academic institutional arrangements and the ecosystem to promote innovation and start-up. And to give an overview of international best practices and lessons of institutional synergy, policy interventions and stimulus those envisaged and envisioned by the nation.
Prof Abhay Karandikar views- increasing trend in the transactional research apart from the fundamental and basic research that has been happening in the HEIs the swift is very evident this has been possible due to setting up of incubators by the govt.
He gave an example of nocrac incubating company during covid came out with a mechanical state of the art ventilator which is now diploid in more than 3000 hospitals across the country. Perfect example of taking transactional research into a market. This story tells us that when young entrepreneurs energy talent and enthusiasm when it is channelized by experienced mentors and leaders it leads to creation of globally competitive products. Major take away from this was close coordination between industry and academia can drive a very innovative and competitive product. Need of an hour, strong mentorship programme, availability of expert task force, readily available market, speed of executive of results which lead to the success of this company.
Prof AB Pandit views – Briefed about the objectives of HIEs, how they can be broadly classified in
terms of technical and technological institutes. Innovations and inventions to convert them into product and processes they require a significant quantum of association and involvement of alumni this resulted into swift of focus from publication and thesis to development of product and processes.
Key takeaway is alumni involvement and association is critical as they can suggest about the societal and industrial needs and methodologies to be adopted so that it helps entrepreneurs in terms of having financial sustainability and technological sustainability
Rahul Nayar views – why would any corporation invest in the innovation at HIEs they do it for 3 simple reasons:
- To be a part of the future to make sure they are not out flanged by the new technologies coming up
- Eye on the bottom line which is commercial opportunities
- What drives sufficiency in that is de risking
He also gave an example of MITs media lab which is a perfect mix of creativity and commercialization.
Key takeaway was how to bridge the gap between the need and the want and need to have interdisciplinary culture and institutional synergy.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS III
Professor Vijay Raghavan in his opening speech addressed one important point. He asked what are we doing today in the context of where we came from recently and where we should go later. At any given time, this innovation and entrepreneurship takes what is available in the ecosystem of quality, looks from the perspective of techno-economic possibility, and what encouragement is received and goes forward. He also said that all the celebrated innovations we are looking at have one prime characteristic of them. They are coming substantially from our educational system and its consequences and less so from our research institutions and their consequences. He also said that there are some examples of extraordinary successes and innovations from our research infrastructures and those are not to be belittled in anyways. He also said that 90% of our research funds go to research institutions or elite institutions were about 10% of our student vote. 90% of the students who go to colleges and universities including central universities were only of our research funds. He also said that we need to expand the funding of research into that ecosystem. The second component is most of the research of top research agencies like DRDO, space, ISRO, they go substantially into their own laboratories. They too need to open up their funding into the broader ecosystem. He also pointed out that the industry is also not investing enough into research. This is often being said but this is a big challenge for the industry because they have capital, they don’t have risk capital.
After this, the Question-Answer session started. The first question asked by a faculty member is – In the current pandemic situation, as an academic institution, what is the area in which we should concentrate on our research. Prof. K. VijayRaghavan answered that the answer should come not at the individual level but at the institutional level. It should be at a level of a group of institutions preferably in the same geographical area or in a thematic area. Another student asked that there has been more emphasis on design thinking. Can you correlate with innovation? Prof. K. VijayRaghavan answered that design of products moved from computer-rated design. He said that it is possible with having high-quality IT prototyping tools linked to actual machines we can design in a world-class manner. The member of AICTE conveyed thanks to Prof. K. VijayRaghavan for giving his valuable time and clearing all the doubts of the audience.
PANEL DISCUSSION 3
Mr. Amit Dutta started the session. He greeted all the members on behalf of the Ministry of Education. Ministry of education is celebrating Innovation week as a part of Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav. He also stated that in the startup world, 2021 has been recognized as the year of unicorns with 40+ unicorns added this year. India is emerging as a global innovation hub hosting the world’s 3rd largest startup ecosystem. India has over 61000 startups as of date. This has created over 6 lakhs jobs. Mr. Amit Dutta introduced the moderator of the panel discussion, Mr. Uday Wankawala, CEO, Atal Incubation Centre. He introduced the panelists, Shri Yashraj Bhardwaj, Shri Harsh Neekhra, Ms. Shefali Vinod Ramteke, and Ms. Neelam Bhayre.
Shri Uday Wankawala told that the youth should take up entrepreneurship as a journey. He said it’s not the grey hairs that matter, it’s the zeal and enthusiasm that will help young innovators and entrepreneurs. He asked whether age matter in entrepreneurship and said that there is no straightforward answer to this question. Shri Uday asked Ms. Shefali to start the discussion. Shefali introduced herself and her fellow co-founder Pavan Kumar, who is the CEO of the startup. They have been working for a long time. She found the topic quite interesting. After that, Shri Yashraj was asked to share views on the topic. He also liked the topic. He said that rather than the accolades, the struggle which he had gone through, matters him the most. He and his brother started their firm with Rs.1500. After that, Ms. Neelam Bhayre came. She shared that she participated in the college and she got great support from MHRD. She also shared that, MHRD gave them the platform to learn and contest and basically how an entrepreneur works. She also said to always be ready with the learning process.
After that Shri Harsh Neekhra came.
He agreed with all the members of the panel. He said that there is a specific roadmap that is followed for entrepreneurs. He was always curious about developing something new. He, with his college group, started a clean energy product. They thought to develop something new. They decided to do something for Delhi smog. Shri Uday asked a very important question that what keeps you on the edge and how are you different from the experienced professionals/executives. Shri Yashraj Bhardwaj started answering the question. He said that he is 22 years old now and even after getting 50 years old, he will not know everything. He said it applies to everybody. He started his business career at the age of 14-15 years. He said that we often go out for looking mentors, but we have mentors in our home only, our parents and if the students are going to follow their parents, they will never fail. Mr. Uday advised the youngsters to do something around AI, blockchain. The best mentee is someone who listens to their mentors. Ms. Shefali said a quote of Elon Musk that great people do not have a career; they have a mission. She totally aligns with that statement. She said that everyone’s life has a different mission. She said she learned to deal differently with different people. She has a mission to create an impact to the world. One should be clear in the goals. Shri Harsh Neekhra added some points. He said that there is a risk of doing something different. He said one should know the right time for the right thing to access that. Ms. Neelam Totally agrees with the 3 panelists about the parent’s support and mentorship. She also believes the same. She chooses entrepreneurship because she believes in the work she is doing and the mission for which her company is basically working. She said about empowering the people and the nature around us. Shri Uday asked an important question. There might be a supplier, dealer, distributor, funders with whom we face difficulty in dealing. He asked the panelists to share some of these incidents. All the panelists shared their incidents where they met with these types of people. Shri Uday talked about great enterprises and he asked Shri Harsh what he thinks about great enterprises. Shri Harsh said about innovation in the business model. Innovation doesn’t lie in the product you are making; it also lies in the business model. Shri Uday in his concluding lines said that there are a number of platforms of the government of India, AICTE, for innovation and entrepreneurship and he has encouraged the audience to take up entrepreneurship.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS IV
Shri Ankit Agarwal(Founder CEO of Phool.com) Kanpur based flower recycling pvt ltd. United nation young leader for sustainable development goal. The session started at 11:45 am. Welcome address was addressed by Chairman of AICTE. Shri. Ankit Agarwal started with how billions of people goes to temple but hardly anybody thinks what happens to them. He tried to create awareness about the fact that temples dump about 8 million tons of flowers into river water that are loaded with pesticides and how it effects the ecosystem. How it is effecting the river and one of the reason for cholera and child mortality. When he was with his friend near the ganga river his friend questioned him if this is holy river why is it dirty. He quit his job and started Phool. He explained about the process of flower recycling. He also explained how he created Flora foam as a substitute of Styrofoam to reduce Thermocol wastage. He explained about how he creates leather out of flowers to save livestock. Also gave an insight about the employment opportunity that has been created in Phool.com. Then, in the question and answer session, Shri. Ankit Agarwal addressed all the questions.
Finally vote of thanks was presented by the Chairman of AICTE.
PANEL DISCUSSION IV
Panelists:
• Dr. Anand Despande, Founder & Managing Director, Persistent Systems
• Mrs. Sridevi Pankajam, MD, Commonwealth Bank of Australia
• Shri C V Raman, Chief Technology Officer, Maruti Suzuki India Limited.
Moderator:
Shri B V R Mohan Reddy, Executive Chairman, Cyient.
The Online panel discussion was held on 12th Jan 2022 for Attracting Big Investment for Innovative ideas from Educational Institution organized by Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell, AICTE in collaboration with DPIIT. It started at 12:15 PM. It started with moderator Shri B V R Mohan Reddy, Executive Chairman, Cyient introducing himself. He explained that 30 minutes will be initial comments from the panelists followed by 15 minutes’ discussion between panelist and followed by Q&A for 15 minutes. He introduced all the panelist. He called the panelists one by one to give their thoughts.
Panelist 1
Dr. Anand Despande started with saying we have be leader not only in numbers but also in technology. He explained the experience innovative projects that he was part of and how to be part
of such projects. He mentioned the projects. He explained what it takes to create such projects. He explained how having big vision is important. He spoke about India’s cancer problems. he explained how much important it is to do a project that will have global, human impact. He ended it by saying let’s think big problems to solve let’s bring community together, and let see these big idea happening.
Panelist 2
Mrs. Sridevi Pankajam started saying when she was working in bank she had an opportunity to work with Dr. Anaintnd Despande’s organization. Innovated a lot on banking, machine learning. She mentioned the problems that stopped her from great Innovation like academy always looked at fundamental research, lot of conversation and documentation, time to market. Explained that creating awareness, interest and execution is very important. She ended by saying how we can influence the kind of study curriculum that academia can have and be part of it then it will be excellent for our country.
Panelist 3
Shri C V Raman started with a presentation. He started giving information about automotive Industry. He spoke about Societal mega trends, Mobility mega trends, Auto Industry Evolution. Also spoke about climate change, changing demographics, digital Technologies, rapid organization. He explained about consumer requirements like increased aspirations and expectations, increased awareness of health and hygiene and increase affinity towards modern technologies. And also challenges like low purchasing power, high congestion, high pollution, high import bill and high road accidents. Explained ACES in Global Context that is Autonomous, connected, electric, shared. He explained the automobile contribution to the Indian economy. Future scope for technology progression was explained. He ended by saying sharing funding can happen in academia.
Moderator took over the session and continued with Q&A session.
Panelist 1
Is there something we can suggest to academic institution?
Panelist 2
What do you think the good practices industry and academia has to follow?
Panelist 3
What should be our inputs to the education system to bring the change about design thinking?
What is the shortest path to produce a marketable product?
Moderator asked one similar question to all panelist
What is the correlation between TRL level 5 and industry level 5?
In the end the moderator ended the discussion by giving vote of thanks to all three outstanding penal members. Thanking AICTE for giving such and opportunity.
PANEL DISCUSSION V
SCHOOLS, INNOVATION, GAMES AND CURRICULUM
The session began with Ms. Mamta Agarwal who greeted the audience and important leads, who is an advisor of AICTE. She mentioned that 2021 is a unicorn year. India to become a trillion- dollar economy, as per the Prime Minister’s dream, we must bring a culture of innovation from the school level she mentioned. She says that the schools must collaborate with local communities, artisans, enterprises etc… in order to inculcate entrepreneurial creativity at the school level. This will help to bring creativity at all levels of society. She adviced the children to stay hungry, take risks, and take the road less traveled.
She then introduced the moderator, Mr. Anil Pradhan who is the national youth awardee of 2021. He is an engineer, innovator and revolutionary educationist. He started Young Thinker
Academy. His team had even gotten invited from NASA. His platform was for teaching students in different spaces. She also introduced Ayushi Singh, student of class 11 from Ayodhya, who designed a smart helmet interlaced with AI for military men. She introduced Tanmay Kumar Sethi from Rourkela, student of class 9, who made a dustbin that has been accepted by Govt. of Gujarat. Then, Ms. Pooja Arora from the Toycathon team was introduced, who is a PhD scholar from JNU, and Ms. Vedika Vignesh who was the winner of the first edition of Toycathon from Telangana were introduced. Then, she handed the session over to the moderator.
Mr. Anil Pradhan started the panel discussion by narrating the story of how children from the remote parts of Orissa, with proper training, had kindled the innovation bone in them and came third in the Land Rover Competition of NASA. He believes that the potential exists in every children of
INDIA. He welcomed Ayushi Singh to elucidate on her innovation first.
AYUSHI SINGH
She greeted the listeners, and expressed gratitude for the opportunity. She showed her project, the smart helmet equipped with geolocation for the military. She shared that the inspiration for that was her grandfather, Brigadier AR Singh, who lost his life in the Kargil war. Ayushi did not wish that upon any other family, and started working on that project. Her helmet is laced with AI sensors, satellite phone to enable communication, and GPS. On the topic, she says that schools play an important role in bringing in innovation. She spoke about how Ancient India was always forward in terms of innovation. She comments that we are lagging behind because of academic pressure, and they are mentally inactive. She suggested that teaching concepts with an application approach and creatively will help them understand better. Games are a good method to bring that teaching properly. She suggested a few games such as Charter Tables and Hand Gestures. She stressed that there should be open labs and science centers in all the corners by the government. She concluded by thanking her mentors, and her teachers who’d helped her through her process.
TANMAY KUMAR SETHI
He greeted everyone and elucidated on how he’d went about to conceptualize insect killing dustbin, for which he’d gotten patent also. He had applied for Abdul Kalam Ignite Awards; to which he had applied. He had gotten the idea after viewing that the garbage dump in his locality were infested with a lot of flies and insects, which bred a lot of diseases.
POOJA ARORA
She thanked the organizers and felt honored to have been in the presence of innovators. She said that her journey had taken with the Indian Education System. She was passionate about Social science and she has earned a lot of degrees of the same. She’s passionate about Science Fiction and mythology, which was the base of the game that was designed. She mentioned that curiosity was a way of life. She believes that social science and natural science go hand in hand. She believes in the interaction of all the silos of education than treating every entity as an entity as its own. Their game introduces foundational social sciences to the beginners, along with strategy. She also played a video of Sansad- the game they had devised. She calls it intellectual gymnastics.
VEDIKA VIGNESH
She began her speech by thanking the panel and the platform for the opportunity. She credited the design thinking workshops that were held at her school and helped her with brain storming, empathizing, ideating, etc… The game was a math-oriented mythological game based on Chakravyuh, the strategy of Drona Acharya from Mahabharata. She emphasizes that the dire situation in Indian students is that they have become Googlers and not Thinkers. Aatma Nirbhar is the buzz word and we must work towards this. She then spoke on the Bloom’s taxonomy and how most of the students in India are only in level 1. She quotes the African proverb which says that it takes a whole village to raise a child. And, innovation must start from home, then school and finally the society. Mr. Pradhan appreciated on the use of an indigenous game which would help the children think out of the box while learning our culture.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Ayushi was asked on what role can school education play on changing our design thinking ability and perception about the society. She answered that school is where a child’s entire development takes place and that children have the highest perceptual capacity. School education is important for the transition from book literacy to the state of existence. It provides the students the platform to express their innovation and creativity, it helps them become good humans. Tanmay was asked why risk appetite is necessary for entrepreneurs. Tanmay said that entrepreneurs must possess the will to try, as the future is unpredictable. The will to try comes with the will to take risk. The risks might lead to failure but that will only help us to think and rectify the mistakes and do it’s right.
Pooja was asked how students can think innovatively and develop products. Pooja believed that innovation is something that has to be developed and cultivated. She advised to get rid of the fear in our minds which is the first step to innovation. She asked the students to not abide by the competition and search for the truth, and follow their passion. She asked the students to stop chasing glamour and work for the future.
Vedika was asked on how can introducing entrepreneurship in school’s curriculum help students like her and on how we can contribute to be a creator’s economy. She said that school learning must be practical, and hands on learning must happen. It will lead to understand innovation and fundamentals better. She says that there needs to be a fearless atmosphere of questioning. The culture of research and art integration are essential in our education, Vedika emphasizes. She also stressed that students must have the liberty to choose their paths. Team work is also important according to Vedika. Mr. Ravindra Soni proposed the Vote of Thanks for the session.
CONCLUSION
The closing ceremony had Dr. Subash Sarkar, from the Ministry of education as the chief guest. Professor Mr. M P Poonia gave the welcome address, who is the vice chairman of AICTE. He spoke on the innovation initiative by the Govt. of India marking its 75th year of Independence in 2022. He also spoke on how innovation is encouraged by different bodies in the center to develop India into an Aatma Nirbhar country. The summary of the symposium was delivered by Dr. Abhay Jere, CIO, Ministry of Commerce. Then, the Chief Guest Dr. Subash Sarakar, addressed the participants. He lauded the panelists and the panel sessions for their insightful talks. He emphasized on how research
and industry must go hand-in-hand. He stated the pharmaceutical industry as an example for Covaxin. He spoke about the efforts of the government to foster innovation amongst the students. The vote of thanks for the e-symposium was delivered by Professor Rajiv Kumar. The event, overall, was extremely invaluable in communicating the importance of innovation to the listeners.
About ISBR: ISBR Business School, Bangalore-based, Top Class B School for PGDM or MBA, Consistently ranked as best B School in India, AICTE-CII Platinum Category, with multiple specializations.