Catch them early and give wings to their entrepreneurial dreams seems to be the mantra driving the Kerala’s ambitious initiative to build a robust ecosystem for start-up ventures involving young talents.
The Kerala Startup Mission (KSM), a joint association of Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram and the Centre’s Department of Science and Technology, has shifted its plans to the top gear aimed at identifying the budding entrepreneurs in schools and nurture the start-up plans of youngsters on the college campuses through a series of innovative projects.
The ‘Intel Tech Challenge Kerala’ 2015 is the latest initiative from the KSM to foster the spirit of innovation and scientific temperament in school students.
“It’s a state-level innovation in education programme for school students with a focus on building technology and computational skills. The overarching aim of this programme is to get students to develop an interest in design, discovery, coding and develop their computational skills through play and learn activities,” saysJayasankar Prasad C., Chief Executive Officer of KSM.
Students from classes nine to 12 can participate in the challenge spread over four phases. An online ideation workshop will expose them to series of online resources/content on innovations and new ideas.
In the second phase, they will submit a synopsis, with their idea and the process to implement it. They will elaborate on the plans in the third phase that involves mentoring by leading technologists and evangelists from the maker community.
The unique projects from ‘Makeathon’ will get an opportunity to showcase their innovation at a State-level event in Kerala in November. Winners from here may be further nurtured and invited as a direct participant to Intel Tech Challenge – India to be held in December.
Prasad said that the government will distribute 7,500 Raspberry Pi computer kits to school students this academic year to initiate them in to the world of coding. “Already, 2500 students in class eight across the 14 districts had received the kits. About 150 teachers had already received training from IT@School under the Raspberry project,” he said.
College-level initiatives
KSM has plans to scale up the ‘Start-up Boot camps’ initiative in colleges to create a start-up ecosystem in each and every college campus through active involvement of students. Boot camp is a student-focused programme that will be completely run by students.
“The early innovators from school, who get support through initiatives like the Raspberry Pi and design and coding challenges, will be exposed to technical and entrepreneurial workshops envisaged as part of the Start-up Boot camps when they reach college,” says Prasad.
The government hopes to reach out to nearly 20,000 college students across Kerala through innovation and entrepreneurship development cells (IEDC) within campuses. The boot camps will lead entrepreneurship activities in the respective institutions and serve as launch pads for business ideas emerging out of colleges.
The Mission is also trying out innovative plans to provide world class equipment for a digital technology start-up like its ‘Start-up Boxes’ project. Teams selected receive a box, which contains an iPhone 6, iPad mini, Macbook Air, Nexus 5, Kindle, 1 TB Hard disk and Arduino Starter Kit, besides a company registration deed, a bank account opening form and an application form under the State’s Student Entrepreneurship Policy.
The Fab Labs in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, mentoring sessions with the leaders in various areas, exposure to funding and visits to dream companies abroad are some of the other schemes being implemented by KSM as part of the Kerala’s start-up policy.
