Anand (Gujarat):The Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) today launched its incubator for Entrepreneurship Development at a national seminar on “Seeding Social Enterprise and Innovation in Universities” here.

The incubator known as “ISEED” was inaugurated by Mr. T. Nandakumar, Chairman of IRMA and Dr. Anita Gupta of the Department of Science and Technology.

The incubator is to focus on creating a peer support structure for social entrepreneurs, collective and sustainable enterprises for students, start-ups (by IRMANs mostly), and mature social enterprises that have been operational for at least four to five years.

Director IRMA Prof. Jeemol Unni said that the British Council, Nottingham Trent University, UnLtd of UK and the Union Ministry of Science and Technology have collaborated for this effort of the institute.

Prof Unni while welcoming the dignitaries, faculty, students, and guests to
the seminar mentioned that the incubatees were already working under CSEE including Dhwani, i- Saksham, and Tallbird. The two-day seminar has been organized under the aegis of the Centre of Social Entrepreneurship and Enterprises (CSEE), one of the five Centres of Excellence of the institute, in a bid to successfully launch the incubator.

In his address Mr Nandakumar said, ‘we are living in an era of intense conflict wherein things have changed for various reasons.” One of those reasons, he said, indicated the ways in which development has been taking place. He spoke of the alternatives the world is seeking to the “throwaway culture” stressing that “conflicts in rural India failed because we could not push inclusive growth to the greatest extent possible.” On the occasion Mr. Nandakumar also released a compendium on Social Entrepreneurship in several top schools and management institutions of the country.

Mr. Sameer Chaturvedi, Head of Social Enterprise (India) at British Council spoke about embedding social enterprise in higher education adding that “social enterprise can be a new tool for addressing problems the world is currently faced with.” He emphasized the importance of doing this “without generating dependency.”

Other speakers during the inaugural event included Ms. Nickala Torkington (UnLtd, UK) and Dr. Anita Gupta of Department of Science & Technology along with Collector Anand Mr. Dhaval Kumar Patel.

DeshGujarat