Activities for Promotion of Entrepreneurship at IIT Kharagpur, RGUKT and IIT Bhubaneswar:With the objective of encouraging students to become job givers rather than job takers, several initiatives have been taken by Prof Raja Kumar in his various capacities. He took personal initiatives to start breadth courses like “Entrepreneurship and Small Ventures”, “Small Business Management” and motivational lectures on ‘How I made it’ newly introduced at IIT Kharagpur in 2003 while serving as Dean (Academic) with the objective of imparting students, particularly those interested in taking up entrepreneurship, with related knowledge. Similar such courses (with appropriate variations) were also initiated and very successfully run at RGUKT and IIT Bhubaneswar too during his assignments there, by the side of holding workshops. He took the initiative to start a dual degree programme, with BTech in any branch of engg and MBA, possibly the first of its kind in the country, at IIT Kharagpur in 2003. This apart, a Minor in management along side a major in any engg, again a first few initiatives in the country, was introduced. It was replicated at RGUKT too and amazingly, more than 1200 students from the first batch graduated with a minor in Management in 2014.
The Vision-cum-Policy Creation for an Ecosystem of Entrepreneurship at IITBBS: Prof Raja Kumar personally created the policy for entrepreneurship development and implemented it very successfully from scratch, immediately after taking over as director.
Creation of the Technology Incubation Center (TIC) at IITBBS: After creating the policy, the TIC was initiated and implemented with a very close guidance provided by Prof Raja Kumar to facilitate entrepreneurship amongst the students and faculty of the institute.
Creation of The Startup Center (SUC) at IITBBS: The SUC was created as per the vision document and very close guidance provided by Prof Raja Kumar, director. A space of 6000 sft was initially provided in the SES building of the IIT Kharagpur extension center facility, Samantapuri campus after the SES was shifted to the permanent campus.
Ambitious Creation of the IITBBS Research and Entrepreneurship Park (REP): The REP was established as a Section-8 company going by the vision document created by Prof Raja Kumar, very ambitiously to jump-start the activity at the level of senior IIT’s. The erstwhile Workshop space measuring 33,000 sft where SIF was established, on temporary basis to REP. The REP was incorporated on the 12th Oct 2017, with Prof R V Raja Kumar as its founding Director and Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Workshops on ‘How to Start a Company’: Prof Raja Kumar says, “the knowledge of how start company and the funding opportunities, a common knowledge of every engineering graduate in our country: He also conceptualized and got a day long workshop on, “How to Start a Company” organized by online mode at IIT Bhubaneswar with huge participation from across the nation. He desires that this be repeated multiple times every year. Furthermore, he personally encouraged and supported the student event, “E-Summits”,
Member of Startup Council, Govt of Odisha: Prof Kumar played an active and constructive role as a member in the Start-up Council of Odisha. IT Policy creation of Govt of AP, etc.
Setting up of SRS Telecom: Prof S L Maskara, Prof R V Raja Kumar and Prof S Chakraborti, established SRS Telecom, a Start-up in the STEP of IIT Kharagpur as faculty entrepreneurs, served as the directors and manufactured laboratory experimental setups for engineering education for which the demand was exponentially rising. After tasting the success, willfully, the professors handed over the company to others. http://www.facweb.iitkgp.ac.in/~rajakumar/index.php?pg=iitbbs/Entrepreneurship
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