A Certification Award ceremony to the budding entrepreneurs who have successfully completed the Entrepreneurship Development & Startup Management program and a Power Talk on “Reigniting Entrepreneurship in the New Normal” has been organized by The Entrepreneur Zone (TEZ) in association with ASPIRE, University of Hyderabad (UoH) on 23 January, 2021. Only the awardees were invited so as to maintain social distancing.
Reigniting Entrepreneurship in the New Normal was the theme to realign the startup world to the changing reality in the Covid 19 era. Prof. Reddana, Advisor, ASPIRE – which houses 3 incubators of UoH – TBI, TIDE & BioNest, spoke about how the University is in the forefront of research, innovation and entrepreneurship. The incubators are working in the areas of Life Sciences, Pharma, Biotechnology (TBI & BioNest) and Electronics & Information technology (TIDE). He invited aspiring entrepreneurs in the area to utilize the incubation facility to do cutting edge innovation. Prof. G. Rajaram, Coordinator, TIDE – an Incubator for electronics & IT startups, spoke about many startups which benefitted from TIDE and even had an exit. Dr Nandita Sethi, MD, The Entrepreneur Zone, spoke about how TEZ has collaborated with the Incubators at UoH, as an Accelerator, to provide the necessary business incubation to take the research & innovation to the market. TEZ has been providing mentorship, advisory and services support to the budding entrepreneurs so that they translate their ideas, research and innovation into a business proposition, which benefits the market and customer.
The Networking event brought together people from the higher education and industry to discuss and assess the initiatives being undertaken to enable and grow the Entrepreneurship ecosystem in the country. Guest speakers spoke on the theme of ‘Reigniting Entrepreneurship in the New Normal’. Ms Divya Medar , Founder of The Snacker’s Street, shared her journey in the segment of frozen foods and the amy lessons learnt rom it to start & scale business. Dr. Ranabir Gupta, Founder, Acumenicus Research, said today technology gives you the leverage to do business from anywhere, at any time and from resources around the world. This is a big boon that startups need to make use of. Prof V. Venkata Ramana, Vice-Chair, TSCHE and founder of TBI at UoH shared the state’s vision to develop and grow startup eco-system and promote entrepreneurship in higher education.
The Cohort of Startups that were certified are in different areas ranging from AI, E-Commerce, Med-Tech, Health Tech, Agribusiness, Construction activity aggregators to SME in traditional textiles and social enterprises in IT Skill development for rural poor, Smart city services, Home fitness services, etc. TEZ MD, Dr. Nandita Sethi spoke about the work TEZ has been doing in spreading the message of entrepreneurship through its Startup Accelerator Program in association with the UoH and is looking forward to spread this message across more educational institutions to run entrepreneurship/startup and Incubation programs on Campuses, so that we can help create a more entrepreneurial India.