Entrepreneurship Week India 09 draws participation from 400 institutes on Ecopreneurship

E Week India 2009, a weeklong public awareness campaign, which ran from February 7-14, aimed at encouraging students to think creatively and explore alternative business models, sustainable technologies and ideas in the backdrop of the enormous environmental challenges that were faced with today.

MBAUniverse.com was the official media partner of this initiative.

This years E-Week India National Championship Awards were bagged by 7 colleges: ISBR Business School - Bangalore; Sri Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain College Bangalore, for whom this is the second consecutive year as Champion; Bengal College of Engineering & Technology Durgapur; IPS Academy Indore; Muffakham Jah College of Engineering & Technology Hyderabad; Institute of Engineering & Management - Kolkata and Heritage Institute of Technology - Kolkata.
In addition, Bangalores Mount Carmel College and Jyoti Nivas College were among the 9 institutes that were declared Runners Up nationwide, while IFIM Business School and MS Ramaiah Inst of Technology made it to the E Week Honor Roll along with 7 other institutes. The Nilima Rovshen Creativity and Innovation Award was awarded to Atharva College of Engineering Mumbai, while the Most Effective Public Awareness Campaign Awards was bagged by IPS Academy Indore.
Spread across 30 cities and towns in India, this third E Week India had participation from over 3.50,000 across the country, almost doubling that of last year. During the week more than 3000 entrepreneurship events and activities were hosted showcasing the extraordinary energy and drive amongst students and professionals from across the country. Over 1,00,000 people took the E Week India 2009 nation-wide Pledge to support entrepreneurship in India.

Students participated in an array of entrepreneurial activities, from green business plans, awareness marathons and rallies to talks and panel discussions on innovation based entrepreneurship, as well as, village yatras, where voluntary student scouts compiled information on local and grass root level livelihood means, all with the aim to support green and alternative business opportunities.

Delivering the keynote address, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon said, The global economic crisis has created a challenging environment for business. This is a defining time for young entrepreneurs as they address opportunities that are strongly linked to global challenges of ensuring sustainability in all fields be it transportation, networks, healthcare, food or energy dependency for the future. I congratulate E Week India, which is empowering young minds with the entrepreneurial spirit to solve the greatest problems of today.

Other eminent chief guests at the Awards Ceremony included Chetan Maini, Deputy Chairman and CTO, Reva Electric Car Company and Mohanjit Jolly, Executive Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Laura Parkin, Executive Director NEN, said, Its been a thrilling week. We are absolutely amazed and humbled to see the faculty and students from over 400 institutes across India lead an entrepreneurial revolution. In its third year, E Week India, with its central theme Go Green the world is our business, has awakened a new thinking and provided direction to identify some of the biggest opportunities for this generation of entrepreneurs. The unstinting support from partners, industry, experts and NENs academic institutes has made E Week India a powerful collaborative platform. We hope to continue to nurture this spirit of enterprise and empower many more students and faculty on campuses with every E Week India. Mohanjit Jolly, Executive Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a leading VC firm in clean and green technologies, says, The significance of this E Week India is really two-fold: one, that it is the entrepreneurs who see challenges that the society faces and embrace those challenges as opportunities rather than run from them or display apathy towards them. Second, it is the youth of this country rather than acts of government or old school entities that will make meaningful change happen. All they need is a platform, some guidance and way to openly collaborate the key tenets of E Week India and NEN.