Coming up with an innovative idea is not a rocket science. Keeping this in mind, National Entrepreneurship Challenge was initiated 5 years back as first-of-its-kind pan-India competition undertaken by the Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) of IIT-B to demystify the shroud of alienism that surrounds innovation.
Through NEC, the institution envisions to help establish E-Cells all across the nation which in turn will help develop the start-up ecosystem in country.
The annual challenge calls for participation from colleges for prizes worth Rs 6 lakh and mentorship from IIT-B. Each college has to first set up an E-Cell with at least 7 students to sustain the cell. The students are then assigned tasks to complete over a period of five months. Tasks include workshops and seminars to initiate dialogue about entrepreneurship among the student community.
Since 2013, the E-Cell of IIT-B has helped develop student-run entrepreneurship-cells in 160 colleges across 80 cities in the country and distributed Rs 2 million. The spread took place post a foreign universities survey to get a better idea of the entrepreneurship-support trends outside India. It gave a clear indication to go beyond the boundaries of IIT-B and set-up similar E-Cells.
The E-Cell of IIT Bombay focuses on developing entrepreneurial spirit of students for an instrumental development of the nation.