13/10/2024
Inaugural Meeting on Capacity Building on Design and Entrepreneurship at VNIT Nagpur
Ministry of Education has set a goal to increase the proportion of students taking entrepreneurship as a career (as a founder or co-founder by 2028-29). In this regard, MoE is targeting to enhance design thinking skills and entrepreneurship drive in 50 top Higher Educational Institutes (HEIs) including IITs, NITs, IIMs, IISERs etc. Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT), Nagpur has been selected as one of the HEIs to participate in the 5 years Capacity Building Program on Design and Entrepreneurship (CBDE), an initiative by the Ministry of Education through Malaviya Mission Teachers Training Program (MMTTP). The objective of the CBDE program is to enhance the capacity of faculty, students and HEIs for creative transformation with a specific focus towards design and entrepreneurship development.
Under this program at VNIT, four expert mentors in the field of design and entrepreneurship have been nominated for the purpose of mentoring the faculty mentors and selected student teams. The expert mentors are Mr. Shashikant Chaudhary a serial entrepreneur and angel investor with 40+ years of experience, Mr. Ashok Wankhede, retired outstanding scientist from BARC Mumbai, Dr. Srikant Annavarapu an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and an expert in mining entrepreneurship with 40+ years of experience, and Mr. Asang Dani, an expert in the field of computer science and system software. Incidentally, three of the four expert mentors Mr. Shahshikant Chaudhari, Mr, Ashok Wankhede and Mr Asang Dani are alumni of VNIT Nagpur. For this program, 37 faculty mentors from 13 different departments have been nominated to guide the student teams of the institute.
In this regard, an inaugural meeting was conducted on recently at Senate Hall of VNIT Nagpur. The meeting was graced by Hon. Director Prof. Premlal Patel, Dean R&C Prof Y. B. Katpatal, Dean FW Prof. R. R. Yerpude, and Dean SW Prof. Ratnesh Kumar, along with the presence of the expert mentors and faculty mentors.
The meeting started with a formal welcome of dignitaries by Dr. A. Mitra, Co-PI of CBDE program. It was followed by a brief presentation by Dr. R. B. Keskar, PI of the CBDE program. The presentation elaborated on the background of the program, roles and responsibilities of the individuals, plan of actions and targets to be achieved through the program. The expert mentors shared their experience and expectations. Hon Director VNIT Nagpur Prof. Premlal Patel expressed his desire to see more job-givers coming out of the institute as against routine job seekers. Deans Prof. Y. B. Katpatal and Prof R. R, Yerpude expressed best wishes for the program and its participants. The meeting ended with the conclusive remarks from Dr. Keskar.