- IIT Delhi emerges winner; to compete with teams from 36 countries at Enactus World Cup 2015
- Student entrepreneurship projects focusing on community outreach from over 90 colleges across India participated in Enactus India National Championship
NewZNew (Chandigarh) : Dr. S.S. Bhatnagar University Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Chandigarh made it to the semi finals along with IIT Ropar and 10 other colleges in the 11th Enactus India National Championship competition held in New Delhi. They won Special Awards presented by Hindustan Unilever for their projects ‘Astitva’ and ‘Phulkari’.
Project Astitva sustains women working in a cloth bag manufacturing unit. NGO CNP+ (Chandigarh Network of HIV Positive Persons) availed a loan of Rs. 10 lakhs from Canara Bank & imported machines to produce semi cloth bio-degradable bags. The unit shut down for 5 months due to poor designs, lack of marketing skills & inability to repay loan. The college students are reviving the unit by getting constant purchase orders & improving their designs. In project Phulkari, the aim of the project is to eliminate middlemen and form direct link between the market in Chandigarh and neighbouring states and women skilled in phulkari embroidery. The project also promotes the art of embroidery by organizing paid 3 month workshops with leading culture tourism firms for Female Sex Workers (FSWs) & Unskilled Girls (UGs). It is also pitching for international sale through websites as well as providing differently able community with professional training of block printing on which phulkari can be traced.
After a grueling competition before an eminent panel of judges from across the corporate world, IIT Delhi emerged the winner of the Championship. Ramjas College, Delhi was the 1st runner-up and Hansraj College, Delhi was the second runner up beating 57 student entrepreneurship projects for community outreach from the Enactus India college network of over 90 colleges and 3000 students participating in the Enactus India National Competition from July 21st- 22nd 2015.
Enactus India is a subsidiary of Enactus Worldwide, an international non-profit organization of students with a focus on community empowerment and entrepreneurship action with a presence in 36 countries with over 70,000 active student members spread across 1700 universities. The winning team from IIT Delhi. will present its project at the prestigious Enactus World Cup 2015 to be held at Johannesburg, South Africa between October 14 – 16, 2015.
“I would like to congratulate Enactus for successfully completing another year of the India National Competition, which continues to inspire students to enhance their entrepreneurial spirit, capitalise on their business skills and to innovatively handle real-world situations. If winning is about being the best, losing is about learning and paving your way to greater success. I also congratulate the winning and participating teams for putting forth their best efforts. Their creativity has won us over and I hope that this experience will help them in their future endeavours,” said Richard Rekhy (CEO, KPMG in India, and Chairman, Enactus India National Advisory Board.
IIT Delhi’s winning project was Excelsior INDIA. As a part of the initiative, the team’s entrepreneurs collect waste papers from urban areas, recycle that and convert the waste paper into recycled paper notebooks of very fine quality. They have also come up with a unique design for a bag-cum-desk, completely made out of cardboard which can serve both as a bag to carry one’s belongings and a desk to write upon. They plan to distribute the bags among children from underprivileged sections of societ alongwith a complete package of stationery items. The stationary package would include the bag-cum-desk, recycled notebooks, four pencils and an eraser. This package will be sold to the students at a very affordable rate of Rs. 30. The entire share of the profit will be given to entrepreneurs. The team also presented Project Aanch- a smokeless chullah for the underprivileged sections of society. The team led by Praneeth Buruju (3rd Year student) has 47 members participating in the winning projects over the last one year.
Farhan Pettiwala, President, Enactus India said “ I congratulate the winning team and all other participating teams from the Enactus India network for making the National Championship a success and wish them all the best for the Enactus World Cup. As one of the largest Enactus country operations, Enactus India is a priority country for the future growth of the organization. We’re very impressed with the hi-level of participation from leading colleges across the country in the National Championship and hope that some of the projects can be adopted by the industry for the development of the community.”
The Enactus India National Champion team in 2014 was Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, New Delhi who went to Beijing for the World Cup for their Project Akshar which empowers the physically disabled and victims of drug abuse to be entrepreneurs by producing and selling eco-friendly notebooks.
