E-Cell@iFEEL: Creating leaders for tomorrow
IFEEL's e-Cell nurtures the entrepreneurial talent of its young MBA students contributes real time to the "Make in India" vision
Be it building a "fluid level detector' for a water purification company or designing a sustainable solution to increasing the usage of sanitary products in Rural India, it calls for innovation, creativity and the ability to take the plunge and become an entrepreneur.
A residential business school located in Lonavala is soon becoming a hub of innovation led entrepreneurship. The Institute uses its residential advantage to nurture the ability that its students have to create interesting and executable products, services or business models. iFEEL (Institute for Future Education, Entrepreneurship and Leadership) as an institution has Entrepreneurship and Leadership in its name and the idea is to create not just managers but also to bring out to the fore the ideas that will shape the world's future and create leaders who will bring about the difference between the ordinary and the extra ordinary.
Since 2013 iFEEL students have set up an active e-Cell which provides the essential mentoring and support to budding entrepreneurs. Last year iFEEL's e-Cell entered the national Entrepreneurship Challenge of IIT Bombay and was among the top 5 e-Cells in India.
And how doe iFEEL do it?
The RAIN Lab at IFEEL, where RAIN is the acronym for Reflect, Act, Innovate and Nurture, is an inspiring and stimulating lab, set up to provide the students their very own space where they can explore and develop their creative ideas so that they can prototype a service or a product and implement them to come out with something that's not only scalable, sustainable but socially relevant. The lab is supported by faculty from Malardalen University, Sweden where they conduct Design workshops where students learn to apply techniques of thinking out of the box to create products and services from innovative ideas, sowing the seeds of innovation led entrepreneurship.
As an outcome of this iFEEL students were part of programs such as ICSID and a Design program to create solutions of the future at Carleton University, Canada.
IFEEL engages its students in various activities, several innovative initiatives and leadership projects. IFEEL in its third year has established its own Entrepreneurship-Cell (E-Cell) in association with IIT Bombay. As a member of this initiative iFEEL organizes several interventions like inviting entrepreneurs and conducting workshops for better understanding of what entrepreneurship entails, preparing students for steps beyond coming up with ideas and actively working towards community building of students who can leverage each other's strengths.
iFEEL is focussed on working in a systematic manner towards developing entrepreneurial initiatives of students by encouraging all those individuals and organizations with entrepreneurial spirit to connect with them .
And this is only the beginning.
Besides E-cell, iFEEL also conducts its annual club activity "Impressario". Under this initiative, the E-cell team conducts various activities like business quiz, elevator pitch, b-plan competition etc. These activities are currently conducted at the intra-collegiate level but the E-Cell team at iFEEL plans to take it to inter-collegiate level and turn "Impresario" into a mega event in the times to come.
Having been provided with such a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem many of IFEEL alumni have developed the zeal and know-how to venture into entrepreneurship. IFEEL aims to transform each student into a unique person capable and willing to contribute to society, organization and self development.
The results are already beginning to show. Some of the iFEEL students are now first generation entrepreneurs.
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