University Institute of Engineering and Technology to launch students' business

CHANDIGARH: Drawing inspiration from the entrepreneurship cells of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the Delhi College of Engineering (DCE) that launch business projects of their students, engineering students of Panjab University have opened up a "facilitation centre" of their own.
Still at a nascent stage, the entrepreneurship development cell (EDC) of PU's University Institute of Engineering and Technology (UIET) has already undertaken two projects of PU students to facilitate them to start up a business.From funding the project to providing mentoring sessions, this facilitation centre would provide all. At present, two projects are being supervised by the centre, one on a unique web portal about Chandigarh and another on a professional networking website module.
"We visited the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) organized by the IIT Kharagpur in January, where the best 20 engineering colleges had presented ideas they are implementing in their colleges to help students become more enterprising," says Akash Kashyap, a BE (II) information technology student of UIET.
Besides Akash, Prashant Aneja and Rahul Rawat, both second year students of bachelors in engineering (BE) have been instrumental in setting up the facilitation centre. "Unlike foreign universities, students in India are not encouraged to be more enterprising. Eventually one finds that those setting up their own ventures end up providing further employment and contribute in a different way to the country's growth. The idea behind setting up the centre was the make students more inclined towards setting up something of their own," says Manu Sharma, faculty member UIET, in charge of the EDC which was set up six months back.