Yesterday, I met with Chandan Dwivedi, Senior Journalist of Hindustan regarding the discussion on Proposal for developing Entrepreneurship Cell and Incubation Center. Similarly, I had a word with Rambha Jha, Founder of Handworld, first incubate of Upendra Maharathi Shilp Anusandhan Sansthan, who got fund from Startup Bihar recently in the last three years and Shubham Kumar, Founder of Watch & View at their office. They simply asked me,” Ranjan, Why you are approaching the ground like meeting with Students, Professors, Teachers, Vice-Chancellor and Pro Vice-Chancellor rather than doing the meeting with Education Minister, Industry Minister, Principal Secretary and so on for giving them orders for developing it? “
I believe that “Startup and Innovation didn’t come by developing just Incubation center, if we are really willing to look forward to innovative startup & venture then we need to fuse the concept of Entrepreneurship among the student’s hearts as a development rather than putting it as a syllabus or orders from higher officials. Also, We need to develop active participation of students, professor, and administration in Entrepreneurship Activities. Have you ever think Why Incubation center of college in Bihar is failed?“
- I realized that College and University professor and administration is taking Incubation center as a burden from the order of Higher Official rather than taking it as a golden era for development. They didn’t take an interest in developing and making it more functional.
- I realized that Students didn’t take it as an opportunity for developing their careers. Students have a misconception regarding Startups & Entrepreneurship. Students are taking Startups as for just raising funds from Startups Bihar rather than taking it as big vision. As a result, the Students didn’t come with new ideas and Innovation. Also, they believe that ones you will bring anything online are known as Startups, but that’s not the truth.
- Lack of Proper channel and information to reach the locals and young entrepreneur, lack of faith, hustle way and long steps, lots of laws, no fast track system, lack of advertisement, more faith on other sources. Lack of social support because of unawareness among people.
- One of the main reasons for most incubators to fail- They only concentrate on getting funding from investors rather than making startups Self Sustainability.
- The biggest problem with Incubation centers in Bihar is they don’t know what they are. What are their roles? How they can be helpful to startups. The reason behind it is the facilitators itself doesn’t understand the meaning of Startup or Entrepreneurship. Because they just got the authorization to be an Incubator so they are. And unable to support any startup as per their best of commitments.
Another reason is Incubators are not having good access to skilled, required and proper resources. So once they don’t have resources they are themselves helpless. If they are helpless to how they will help a startup. - Incubation Centre is unable to provide Mentors from time to time which is most important part of any Incubation Center. Even, they are unable to connect with the Industry in the lack of connections.
As per my knowledge, Bihar has 31 universities, but, you won’t believe that none of these universities has a single incubation centre, nor any entrepreneurship cell – they don’t have any proper training or placement cells either. It’s true that few universities have started training and placement cells, and student activity centers, as per official documents, but they are not functional on the ground.
I have been trying to develop entrepreneurship cell in local colleges of Bihar and also trying to settle Incubation centers in the college and universities of Bihar. I have done approx. 650+ Meetings in Patna University in last one year for developing entrepreneurship cell and Incubation Centre.In which 1 meeting with Vice Chancellor, 2 Meeting with Registrar and 12 Meetings with Pro Vice-Chancellor. Now, In the month of January 2019, finally, they decided to establish it with the name of Patna University Incubation Hub proposed by me. Similarly, I proposed these things in the International School of Management, ISM Patna and very soon it will be coming. Besides these, In Patliputra University, Magadh University and so on.
Recently, I met Dr. Rajesh Kumar, the Vice Chancellor of newly made Purnea University in the months of December and discuss these things in details for establishing such things. So, We planned to organized Startup and Entrepreneurship related activities in Purnea and finally, they organized North Bihar Conclave in the month of January. Beside this, I have word with other universities and colleges too. But, it’s a government process so it takes time, So I kept my patience.
Yesterday, I got a mail from the Central University of South Bihar for the invitation for discussion on developing Entrepreneurship Cell and Incubation Center. Also, Today I have a meeting with Pro Vice-Chancellor of Patliputra University.