IIT Kharagpur organizes Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2022
Entrepreneurship Cell under the aegis of Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship of IIT Kharagpur, conducted their annual flagship event the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) 2022, on the theme ‘Innovation for Inclusion’ from 10th to 13th March 2022 in an online mode. The event was inaugurated by Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari, Hon’ble Director, IIT Kharagpur. Shri Nitin Gadkari, Hon’ble Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Government of India graced the event with his presence. Mr. Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder and CEO, Gupshup, and Mr. Saugata Gupta, Managing Director & CEO, Marico Ltd were the guest speakers at the opening ceremony.
The summit had a plethora of events over the four days, including competitions in various segments with titles like GES Pitchers, Intern Carnival, Co-Founder’s meet, PhonePe’s PayHack, Business Game, Gaming Night and HP Innov-Ethos. There were many workshops including ‘Evolution of FinTech in India’ conducted by Mr. Srijon Biswas, Head of Engineering, PhonePe and ‘Technology and Innovation: How it’s important for entrepreneurship’ by Mr. Vipul Mittal, Transformation Leader at Ernst and Young Global Delivery Services. GES had a global outreach with international panellists from countries like USA, Brazil, Germany, Australia and Finland besides others. With over 100 renowned investors, 300+ entrepreneurs and over 1500 college students from across the country as well as faculty members from numerous universities, the level of engagement was remarkably high. Various startups participated in the Intern Carnival, where they offered internship positions in diverse fields from Business Development to Computer Vision, to students across the country. Co-Founder’s Meet is an event where budding entrepreneurs meet like-minded people to discuss their ideas and explore possibilities of partnering in a venture like ‘Connecting the Dots,’ is an initiative at GES that helps in idea cross-pollination among the Entrepreneurship Cells of the colleges and universities across the country for symbiotic prosperity. Another large-scale participation is witnessed in the Business Model Competition, ‘Empresario’ organised annually by the ECell and the finale is merged in GES, where the current edition saw the participation of more than 1500 teams from which after mentoring and quality screening 28 teams could be vying for the top honours as finalists.
Shri Nitin Gadkari, Hon’ble Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Government of India, appreciated the contribution of the Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Kharagpur fostering innovation and entrepreneurship among the youth of India with the support to set up business, training, incubation, patents and funding congratulating the Institute on incubating over 200 startups. Upholding the theme ‘Innovation for Inclusion’, he said that, “This would be the approach of India along with the knowledge and application of Science, Technology, Research and Entrepreneurship which will be benefitting India to become Aatmanirbhar”. He delineated the importance of such summits in promoting the culture of entrepreneurship and understand as to how small idea grows into big businesses. He talked about the emerging sectors, working towards sustainability, such as electric vehicles, battery swapping, green hydrogen and ammonia and solar panels alongside windmills. He urged that the priorities of the stakeholders need to be aligned with the country’s commitment to net-zero carbon emission in the future and called upon entrepreneurs to work with innovative ideas for generating energy from waste material making India more self-reliant and clean besides exploring opportunities for import substitution and export.
Prof. Virendra Kumar Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur, stressed on the importance of innovation and entrepreneurship reflecting the enormous possibilities in solving the problems and socio-economic issues involving healthcare, water and environment.
Mr. Beerud Sheth, Co-Founder and CEO, Gupshup, remarked that “Entrepreneurship is about can-do attitude, it is not about IQ, rather it is about EQ, to hone the ability to sell and be creative in approach.” Mr. Saugata Gupta, Managing Director & CEO, Marico Ltd explained why innovation is important for startups.
Mr. Muhammad Yunus, Hon’ble Noble Laureate, remarked that, “Humans are born to be entrepreneurs and not just run after degrees and jobs. We need to be job creators rather than job seekers”. The Nobel laureate emphasised on the importance of social entrepreneurship as a better alternative to charities as the money used in charities can be used only once.
GES 2022 gained the support of many corporate sponsors and was presented by Reliance Industries Limited, co-sponsored by PhonePe and powered by Acer. The entire event was conducted under the able guidance of Prof. Pranab Kumar Dan, Associate Professor, Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship
Content Writer:- Poulami Mondal, Digital & Creative Media Executive (Creative Writer) Email: poulami.mondal@iitkgp.ac.in, media@iitkgp.ac.in, Ph. No.: +91-3222-282007