The Veterinary and Livestock Innovation and Incubation Foundation (VLIIF) of Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU) organised the Start-up Entrepreneurship Grand Challenge (SEGC) on Thursday.
The event was organised in collaboration with the provincial government’s Startup Punjab initiative with an aim to promote start-ups and develop an ecosystem for growth of entrepreneurial culture in the university.
In his welcome address, Dr. RS Sethi, Director, VLIIF and Dean, Faculty of Dairy and Food Science and Technology, said that the Department of Science and Technology-National Initiative for Development and Harnessing of Innovations (DST-NIDHI), Central Government, ₹An Inclusive Technology Business Incubator (i-TBI) will be set up at the university with an investment of Rs 5 crore to foster innovation, entrepreneurship and excellence within the academic community. The SEGC is part of a series of events that the university will be organising in the coming days to provide opportunities to students and rural youth to explore the entrepreneurial potential in the veterinary and livestock sector.
Deepinder Dhillon, Joint Director, Invest Punjab, explained various initiatives of the state government to connect various incubators with stakeholders.
VLIIF invited startup ideas from across the country. Ten outstanding candidates will be shortlisted to present their models in this competition. The top three ideas include: ₹50,000, ₹30,000 and ₹20,000 by Startup Punjab.
The rest of the budding entrepreneurs were due to arrive tomorrow, but two of them were there on the first day.
Vaidanath, a budding entrepreneur from Hyderabad, is launching his “Dairy Dictionary” here. His idea is to create an online community for local farmers to share experiences, learn from each other and at the same time stay updated on the latest developments in the sector.
“We are planning to create a single platform where dairy farmers can find everything they need close at hand. For now, we are supporting English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Marathi. We will soon introduce Punjabi,” said Vaidhanath, who has already launched software that will help small dairy farmers manage all their operations, from what they spend on dairy to how much they earn, all from a single app.
Budding entrepreneurs include Amrjit Singh Nariyal, a young man from Hoshiarpur, who is developing a completely organic farm that grows food, develops dairy products and processes cow waste into fertiliser.
“We want to maximise the production from our land in a sustainable way. We lacked the guidance to grow it into an organised business, but initiatives like this give us the know-how we need to bring our idea to life and make something out of it.”
