The Thiagarajar College of Engineering here on Friday entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with NativeLead Foundation and launched the ‘Youth Ventures Programme’ with the objective of producing patriotic innovations and entrepreneurs.
Addressing the MoU signing ceremony at the college located at Tirupparankundran, R. Sivarajah, convenor, Information and Communications Technology Panel, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Madurai Zone, said that the main aim was to create awareness, motivate, train and connect to resources and extend real-time platforms for the younger generation to become innovators and business leaders of the future.
Various studies, he said, predict that India would have a huge youth population and that both the Government and private sector would not be able to generate adequate jobs. Without adequate employment opportunities, he said, many were likely to indulge in anti-social activities and create social unrest.
Though the MoU, he said that they were establishing YOVE Consulting Limited, which would be an off-shoot of the Foundation. This Extended Business Unit would come up at TCE and will have a board comprising 40 per cent faculty and 60 per cent students.
It would create a real-time company environment inside the campus and would identify various interest groups among students having different technology ideas and provide support for developing different product and services for the market.
Delivering the special address, R. Dinesh, Chairman, CII, Tamil Nadu, and Joint Managing Director of T.V. Sundram Iyengar and Sons, said that most organisations were built on traditions, systems and process that people were expected to explicitly follow.
This initiative, he said, should help students to think differently as today, people wee willing to finance new ideas that would change processes and create new solutions.
Karumuttu T. Kannan, TCE Correspondent, said that students must pause and change their focus that was presently fixated solely on campus placements in IT Companies. Ashwin R. Desai, Trustee, NativeLead Foundation, said that foundation had been conceived by IT entrepreneurs and works to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
V. Abhai Kumar, TCE Principal, said that globally, engineering education was moving from teaching-centric approach to a learning centric one. N. Krisnhamoorthy, Chairman of CII Madurai Zone, Priya Bala, Director (Corporate Relations), NativeLead Foundation, spoke.
