Top IITS and IIMS join hands to promote start-up culture

MUMBAI: In a first, the Indian Institute of Technology-bombay (IIT-B) has joined hands with top engineering and management institutes in the country to launch a consortium to aid the start-up ecosystem.

As the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) at IIT-B completes 15 years, faculty members from its campus along with those from Iit-madras and Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, and IIM Kozhikode launched ‘Innovation-venturing and Entrepreneurship in India Network (IVEIN)’ on February 15.

The new network will leverage the strengths of each of these partner institutions to boost the

Indian entrepreneurship ecosystem through high-quality research in innovation, venturing, and entrepreneurship. It will tie up with other stakeholders such as incubators, governments, and investors to generate and disseminate knowledge. The IVEIN was launched along the side-lines of the ‘Dialogue with Stakeholders’ event held by SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship) at IIT-B.

“The proposed network will create a strategic bridge between various stakeholders, strengthen the ecosystem, and synthesise the knowledge that exists in silos among different groups,” said B Ravi, head of the Desai Sethi School of Entrepreneurship at IIT-B.

The first activity of IVEIN is to publish a biennial ‘India Innovation, Venture and Entrepreneurship Report’ which will journal the Indian entrepreneurship ecosystem.

“The IVEIN network will facilitate high-quality research in this field among the academic fraternity in India and create avenues for dissemination of the relevant knowledge through conferences and journal publications,” said A Thillai Rajan, faculty member, department of management studies at IIT Madras.

“The network backed by the academic rigour of premier institutions would help formulate knowledge in the fast-evolving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country,” said Keyoor Purani, faculty at IIM Kozhikode.