Entrepreneurship is a career choice that is growing in popularity across the world. The freedom to innovate, the independence to direct, and the prospect of owning one’s own success is prompting students and career professionals alike to venture out on their own. However, the enthusiasm to ‘startup’ on your own needs to be tempered by the reality that entrepreneurship is a challenging career track. Besides solid technical skills, several other skills are required to turn an idea into a successful venture. An entrepreneur has to wear many hats and his or her high level skills need to extend into product development, sales and marketing, finance, human resource management, operations, strategy, leadership, communication, and more. How does one acquire so many diverse skills and how does one contextualise this knowledge for entrepreneurship?
One way is through tailored entrepreneurship programs. Such programs emphasise all-round skill development specifically for implementation in an entrepreneurial context. One such world class program is Crescent School of Business’s MBA Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Venture Development (MBA-IEV) programme for prospective and existing entrepreneurs. The MBA IEV is a 2-year full-time programme approved by AICTE and Innovation Cell of Ministry of Education, Government of India. This programme is a specially designed course for individuals looking to become skilled entrepreneurs in an age driven by innovations in data and technology and provides the dual advantage of MBA education plus startup support. For programme students, this course acts as a launchpad for their innovative ideas such that they are enabled for translating plans into products. Moreover, it isn’t about theory only – the hands on and experiential programme provides pre-incubation and incubation support to aspiring and existing entrepreneurs to help them convert their visionary ideas into lucrative, viable, and sustainable business models.
Some of the several specific features of the programme that enable this conversion are:
- Innovative, experiential, and practice-oriented curriculum and pedagogy
- Open access to incubators and coworking spaces
- Industry stalwarts and entrepreneurs as advisors, faculty, and mentors
- 1 to 1 expert mentoring for each candidate and his/her idea
- Support for patent rights
- Access to funding from Government, NGOs, angel investors etc.
- International certification in innovation
- Access to seed capital
- Training prorgammes at Project Management Institute (PMI), Chennai
The programme is driven by the award winning Crescent Innovation & Incubation Council (CIIC). CIIC was set up by the B.S. Abdur Rahman Crescent Institute of Science and Technology,a deemed to be University under Section 3 of UGC Act 1956. It is a unique Technology Business Incubator for startups that provides an innovative ecosystem to participants that includestudents, faculty members, industries, investors, and society at large.CIIC focuses on disruptive technologies in the domains of Industry 4.0, Mobility & Transportation, and Life Sciences. This focus is achieved through cutting edge laboratories at CIIC dedicated to each of these important areas. Besides these labs, CIIC also hosts dedicated Centres for research and development. CIIC’s government collaborations include those with Government of India Department of Biotechnology’s Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), Entrepreneurship Development and Innovation Institute (EDII) – Innovation Voucher Programme (IVP) by Government of Tamil Nadu, and Government of India’s Startup India Seed Fund Scheme (SISFS).
So far, 122+ start-ups have been supported by CIIC and programme participants have filed 70+ patents. ₹7.30 Crs in startup grants and ₹ 51.33 Crs in private investment has also been raised.
