Kerala Technological University to spur student entrepreneurs

Thiruvananthapuram: The newly formed Kerala Technological University (KTU) will introduce the concept of residential student entrepreneurship by which students can avail one-year leave at a time for entrepreneurial initiatives during studies.

Outstanding students, who wish to pursue entrepreneurship, can take a break after the second year.

This was one of the recommendations of the KTU’s draft start-up policy prepared by a committee headed by Madhavan Nambiar, the former civil aviation secretary and chairman, IITMK.

The policy aims at generating 10,000 student start-up ideas every year.

The panel comprised Dr Jayashankar Prasad, CEO TBI Technopark, Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman, Startup Village Kochi, Dr B. Anil, principal, Government Engineering College, Barton Hill, and M R Narayanan, MD, Floatels India.

KTU pro vice-chancellor M Abdul Rahman said the policy was in tune with that of the state government.

“The draft policy will be finalised after getting suggestions from the public and technical community,” he told DC.

“Final-year students of KTU will be required to take a matter-of-fact problem applicable in real life and resolve it as part of academic curricula through their final year project”.

The KTU will also work with banks and financial institutions to set up an angel fund for them.

The draft policy is available for suggestions at the KTU website www.ktu.edu.in and the public can suggest modifications till June 15, 2015.

The Policy has set 2020 as the deadline for some objectives including generating more numbers of Indian owned global technology companies based out of the state and to incubate at least 1,000 technology product startups.

The KTU will create indicators to measure and rank all the departments and colleges in an annual student start-up index.