The National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) was set up to guide and encourage youngsters in entrepreneurship. “When you look at countries like the US, every university campus is filled with young entrepreneurs and many who graduate are also keen on start-ups. Unfortunately in India, it hasn’t been so methodical. It was to fill up this gap that NEN was set up. We basically want to create valuable jobs in India. We noticed that many successful start-ups were by average middle-class people who wanted something better than the jobs they were in. Two-thirds of new jobs in the country are created by organisations like this, take Infosys for example. We want youngsters to know that the opportunities in India are great,” said Laura Parkin, Executive Director, NEN.

Once a year NEN organises the Entrepreneurship week, which is a national level competition. The winners are judged based on various aspects such as student and faculty involvement, quality and quantity of events organised, how many organisations and people have they reached- government, corporates and general public, creative use of media and the environment on campus.

Bangalore colleges are also a strong force in this network and they have  been a part of the celebrations last week, with almost 300 events held during the week. Says Vasanti Venugopal, professor at Mount Carmel College, who is the faculty member of NEN in the college, “NEN has definitely started a movement in our college.

We have almost every department participating. The E-week is an opportunity for students to showcase what they have been doing through the year. In fact, the girls have been so enthusiastic about entrepreneurship that we may be soon be starting two companies on campus.” Vasanti says that NEN has various advantages, “Not just students but as teachers even we can learn.  I have attended modules with educators from IIMB. NEN provides an immense amount of resources and teaching materials. In our field there is no competition, we all wish to share, so NEN’s network has helped a lot, because we are in touch with many institutes and we can all share information.’’

So while the teachers are raving about it, how has it benefited the actual target group? Says Nag Manohar, a third year Mechanical Engineering student and the vice-president of the E-cell in MVIT, “NEN has given us various things - one, it is a platform, two, it has provided a great network. Usually, the only time we meet students from other colleges is at an inter-college fest and at that time we are competing against each other. So unless we have personal friends, there is no way we can interact with others. NEN has a network in place and by becoming members we have access to contacts nation-wide. Not just students, we also meet many people from the industry- like we were able to meet Nandan Nilekani, Narayana Murthy, Kiran Majumdar Shaw as well as smaller entrepreneurs with start-ups. The E-week allows to create awareness and come up with new ideas because we have dedicated time. Through this week, two clubs were started on campus- a movie club and a social centre. We don’t have to graduate and immediately start our own companies but the skills that we learn are important because we can use these in any job that we may take up- it gives us that extra edge.”

GRAND FINALE

The grand finale of the NEN was held at St John’s auditorium in Bangalore, which was attended by a large audience. To add to the festivities was a dazzling dance performance by Nritarutya and fashion show by the students of Mount Carmel College.  Student-designer Chinmayi was given the best designer award.

Another highlight of the evening was the much awaited Championship Awards which were bagged by 7 institutes for their enthusiasm, engagement and extraordinary effort. This year’s champions included NSHM Knowledge campus, Kolkata; Mount Carmel College, Bangalore; IPS Academy, Indore; PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore; Bengal College of Engineering and Technology, Durgapur; St Joseph’s College, Bangalore and Sri Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain College, Bangalore.  The outstation winners were flown in to the city to receive the awards.

At the end of the ceremony, DJ Ram played some rocking music to entertain the students and the teachers.