VISAKHAPATNAM: Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday pitched for establishing a close linkage between universities and industry to mentor and handhold students with novel business ideas. Stating that entrepreneurship among women should be promoted, he urged the corporate sector to fund the entrepreneurial ecosystem on university campuses.
Addressing the TiE Global Summit-2020 through video-conference from Visakhapatnam, Naidu asked universities to set up incubation centres to tap and nurture entrepreneurial talent among youngsters. The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE) is a Silicon Valley-based non-profit organisation supporting start-ups through networking.
Noting that the youth comprise about 65 per cent of India’s population, the V-P stressed that the vast energies of the talented youth should be tapped fully and their mindset should be changed from being job-seekers to job-creators. He also wanted a special drive be launched for promoting entrepreneurship among women.
“There is a huge potential for promoting women entrepreneurs in the country,” he said and expressed happiness over the fact that TiE has mentored 50,000 aspiring women entrepreneurs.Quoting a recent NASSCOM data that about 50 per cent of the tech start-ups are confident of reaching revenues of pre-Covid-19 level he said, “This certainly is optimistic news and I am sure things would look up for all Indian start-ups in the near future.”
Talking about the challenges thrown up by the pandemic, the Vice-President said this is the time to turn adversities into opportunities. Calling upon the youngsters to come up with innovative ideas to meet the emerging challenges, he wanted the creation of an ecosystem that can enable many innovative ideas to be translated into promising start-ups.
With more and more young people joining the labour market, the world will need about a half-a-billion new jobs by 2030, he said. And called upon the established entrepreneurs and chambers of commerce, associations to mentor the next generation.
The Vice-President was of opinion that good entrepreneurial ideas backed by talent will beckon investors, who will be willing to invest in early-stage entrepreneurs not only in Silicon Valley but in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam also.
Nellore woman suffering from rare disease gets V-P’s help
Nellore: Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu extended financial support to a young woman from Nellore suffering from rare genetic disease Fanconi anaemia and in need of bone marrow transplantation. The Vice-President arranged `18 lakh for the woman’s treatment. The patient, Divya Sree, has completed her post-graduation in Computer Applications and her father Chechukumar is a bus conductor at the RTC’s Sullurpeta depot. Doctors at CMC Hospital, Vellore have said allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation or haploidentical stem cell transplantation was urgent for her. As the treatment costs `25 lakh, the father had written to the V-P seeking help.