Course on Grassroots innovation for MBA students

Entrepreneurship Academy conducted last course on Grassroots innovation for MBA students in Belgaum on 4 December. Students visited the social enterprise, Mitan, to see a local example of grassroots innovation and its impact on rural communities. Mitan creates livelihood opportunities for rural women in Gokak district. They are producing handicraft products and exporting to other countries. Mr Gopi Krishna, founder of Mitan, provided insightful information about how Mitan combines knowledge of local traditions and handicrafts with business principles to create a social impact.

Students also participated in a session where they learned how they can utilize the Right to Information Act (RTI). Mr. Krishna, the Program Manager of Lead, led a very engaging session and the students were excited that they now understand how RTI could be beneficial to them.
Additionally, students attended interactive sessions on IT skills for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovative resource management. The course concluded with a final question paper to ensure students grasped the critical concepts from the course.

“Desh” session for EA

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is the Chairman of Sparta Group LLC, A123 Systems (AONE), Sycamore Networks (SCMR), Tejas Networks, Sandstone Capital and HiveFire. He was also a founding investor in Airvana, Cimaron, Webdialogs and Relicore.

Prior to co-founding Sycamore Networks, Dr. Deshpande was founder and chairman of Cascade Communications Corp.

Dr. Deshpande serves as a member of the MIT Corporation, and his generous donations have made possible MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

Dr. Deshpande holds a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, an M.E. in Electrical Engineering from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and Ph.D. in Data Communications from Queens University in Canada.

Dr. Deshpande is a trustee of the Deshpande foundation. He and his wife are involved in several non-profit initiatives that include support for MIT, IIT, TiE, Akshaya Patra Foundation, Public Health Foundation of India and the Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox in India.

"Cracking the Code" Competition for the Students.

Cracking the Code Flyer

Oxford College IT Class

Oxford College had an IT training on the communication and Social networking tools, on 20-09-2010 in Deshpande Centre for social Entrepreneurship. These tools are very useful to set the communication level high, these tools will be used by them in communication with the E A team as well as their faculties. E Cell members have got this opportunity to gain this extra knowledge which can be helpful for them in their entrepreneurial thinking, the tools they learned are useful for their academics also.

E A Team wish Oxford college E Cell members All the Best for their Future.

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3rd E Cell Meeting

EA had 3rd E Cell meeting on 04th July 2010 in DCSE Hubli. EA had introduced Suma to the E Cell members, who have recently joined for EA program. The students from GBS and BIMS Belgaum and IMSR Hubli had attended this meeting; there was an interaction with Elisha and Azim the English instructor of DFP from North Eastern University Boston. The students had a brainstorming secession for the activities to be done with the E Cell after the internship, lot of Ideas had come out and the students are excited for the action.

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande meets with faculty, directors & E-Cell members.

On 12th April, Desh met with EA’s E-Cell members and faculty at DCSE. During the event, Desh gave awards to students from GBS (Hubli) for their involvement in the 2K Challenge. Following the awards’ ceremony, one student from each school gave a brief presentation about their E-Cell activities and interest in engaging in entrepreneurial activities through the E-Cell. Desh then addressed the group with an inspirational talk on pursuing an entrepreneurial life. Below are some students’ feedback on what they learned from the session.

• You are the CEO of your own life
• Learn not just to be an entrepreneur, but also learn to lead an entrepreneurial life.
• Life is full of opportunities.
• Enjoy playing in every stage of life.
• Don’t give up or comprise one’s passion to be something.
• Entrepreneurs must have the guts to face Uncertainties..

IT trainings for faculty & students:

E-Cell members are engaging in trainings on IT applications for aspiring entrepreneurs. The first round of training covered a variety of areas, such as advanced Google applications, FaceBook and Blogs.
Through regular trainings, faculty members are developing advanced IT skills for academics. Trainings thus far have covered, advanced Google applications, FaceBook, Blogs, Dropbox, and advanced applications of Microsoft office suite.
EA plans to continually engage faculty and students in trainings to enhance their ability to utilize cutting edge IT applications in their work