#StartInCollege Phase 2 to be Launched at FICCI Global Skills Summit

NEW DELHI:
Startup Village, India’s first PPP model incubator which is heralding a student startup revolution across the country, is launching the second phase of its flagship six-month Silicon Valley entrepreneurship programme for college students at the FICCI Global Skills Summit (GSS) on September 15.
The programme will be launched in the presence of Union Minister of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy. FICCI’s Skill Development Chair, Mohandas Pai, will also be present during the event. FICCI is the industry outreach partner for #StartInCollege and is supporting efforts to create awareness about the programme among engineering students.
“FICCI is a strong supporter of integrating entrepreneurship education with the academic curriculum to fully realise the potential of initiatives such as Startup India and Skill India,” said Mohandas Pai. “The various sessions during the Global Skills Summit will highlight the importance of such efforts and our support for the #StartInCollege programme is to enable students to start young with a mindset of becoming job creators of the future.”
The key objective of the # StartinCollege programme — to provide training, mentorship and global exposure bright entrepreneurial college students — is aligned with the core theme of the GSS of “Skilling for the Future”, which experts will discuss in detail on September 15th when India celebrates Engineers Day to mark the birth anniversary of the legendary M Visvesvaraya.
#StartinCollege, an initiative of SV.CO, the digital iteration of Startup Village has just completed a hugely successful first phase, during which it received applications from 1,946 teams from 228 universities across 1,395 colleges in 26 states.
The programme offers top engineering teams from India the chance to nurture their business idea, build a prototype and launch to early customers in six months. The last week of the programme will be at the Silicon Valley in the US where internet giant Facebook will partner the official host for students, and allow them to interact with its developer teams.
“Integration of entrepreneurship education and skills in higher education is vital for India to create a new generation of nation builders. Arming our youth to acquire knowledge on online platforms and helping unleash their creativity to build disruptive startups that will become generational companies of the future is what we aim to do,” said  Sanjay Vijayakumar, Chairman of Startup Village. “Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook are such generational companies that were built by college students to signify what they wanted in the world. We want our youngsters to follow a similar path.”
Students can apply for the Phase 2 admissions online at www.sv.co until September 30. Leading e-commerce platform Paytm is offering 30 full scholarships for the programme.
The inaugural six-month entrepreneurship course commences on January 2, 20
17. The students who have applied will go through a coding and video task selection process and the best teams will be enrolled for the Silicon Valley Programme.