It's 'One Campus' for Ahmedabad's students!
August 27 2015, Ahmedabad, India
Students across Ahmedabad's academic institutions - IIM Ahmedabad, IIT Gandhinagar, GTU, Nirma University, NID Gandhinagar, DA-IICT and EDI - have come together to form a student chapter, called the 'A-League' which is an initiative to bridge the gap between the different institutions in the Ahmedabad–Gandhinagar cluster and bring these diverse talent pools together. "The A-League is essentially a social network where college students from across Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar can come together to have fun, exchange ideas and hopefully start-up" says Sanket Shah of IIT Gandhinagar. Priyanka Chopra, Director of Portfolio at the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship adds, "We believe that when such highly motivated students with different skills and interest areas come together, magic is bound to happen!"
The A-League was conceived in IIM-Ahmedabad's Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) in November 2014 and is a culmination of the longstanding aspirations of both the student community as well as academia. The first event of the A-League is "IdeaThon 2015" - a student business plan competition where each participating team is mandated to include students from at least 2 institutes in order to pitch their business idea. This is in sync with the A-League's "One Campus" motto. The event is supported by CIIE, and is planned to take place in the IIM Ahmedabad campus on 13th Sept, 2015. "Innovation and entrepreneurship require crossing of disciplinary boundaries. Interdisciplinary teams generate creative tension and tend to come up with more innovative ideas than more homogenous teams", says Rakesh Basant, Professor of Economics at IIM Ahmedabad. "If Gujarat is to contribute to the growing breed of innovation driven startups in India, it is imperative that students from different institutions in the Ahmedabad and other Higher Education clusters work together".
The A-League also has a lot of other events in the pipeline. "We have planned a series of cultural events to enable people from different colleges to break the ice and meet new friends", says Prakash Danny Sagar, Cultural Secretary of IIM Ahmedabad. Among them is a 7-day, cross-campus Navratri celebration. They also plan to have different workshops and seminars in the various colleges to promote innovation and entrepreneurship.
At the moment the A-League is awaiting more applications for IdeaThon 2015. "We have received an enthusiastic response from the students so far, and we are getting more and more registrations every day!" says Nitasha Jhala, Associate at the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship. The deadline for applications for IdeaThon is 23:59 hours, August 31, 2015. Students from all colleges across Ahmedabad are invited to apply at www.a-league.org.
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