Last week, Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research bagged two awards at Assocham’s 9th Higher Education Summit in New Delhi. While the institute won the ‘Best Innovative Institute’ award for its contribution towards management education, its director Prof Uday Salunkhe was honoured as ‘Best Education Entrepreneur’. In an interview with Vikram Chaudhary of The Financial Express, Prof Salunkhe talks about his expectations from Union Budget FY17, the Start-up India initiative, and the role of universities in nation building. Excerpts:

What are your expectations from the upcoming Union Budget?
Education warrants a substantially bigger allocation of resources, funds and focus. Last year, the outlay was snipped by 2%. The outlay needs to be expanded for inclusion and quality, considering the growing demography. Schemes like Make-in-India, Smart Cities, renewables need behavioural and social transitions within a community, and these are more impactful and deliverable in younger classrooms. Teacher training is also paramount.

Speaking specifically about higher education, we have to spend more on infrastructure with intense focus on quality and expanse. R&D, incubation labs, innovation centres, science parks, technology, IT … all should be grown. Higher education creates professionals who, in turn, fuel the growth engine. If manufacturing is to be shored up, then focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has to be buoyed.

How do you look at ‘Start-up India’?
This initiative has brought start-ups into the mainstream. Start-ups create wealth, generate employment and, being rooted in realities, often offer sustainable growth solutions. We are sitting on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution, with transformative technologies rendering the world more democratic and economies more convergent. During such times, the start-up culture is bound to grow, and must grow.

It is sometimes argued that entrepreneurship cannot be taught in just two years at a business school
To an extent, the statement is true. Entrepreneurship is a culture, not a workshop. Entrepreneurial spirit has to be inculcated right from the primary and secondary school levels. A business school can impart some basic framework to help entrepreneurial decision-making, facilitating the development of the students’ entrepreneurial mindset. A business school also provides the platform for students to engage with entrepreneurs, entrepreneur networks, venture capitalists, etc. All this helps the potential entrepreneur, in the student, to take an informed call.

Having said that, training is pivotal. After all, two years of laser-focused intensive training, by the best minds in the right direction, is bound to produce results. These two years are brilliant concoctions of live projects, industry interface, EQ training, soft skills, internships and much more. So you cannot undercut the role of a good business school in creating entrepreneurs.

Recently, Welingkar students worked to make the Nashik Kumbh a better experience for visitors. What was the idea behind the initiative?
It was launched in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which has been using technological breakthroughs to resolve a variety of civic issues. Nashik Kumbh gave our students a platform to complement technological solutions with management innovation. It challenged and recognised their faculties of design thinking, innovation, project management and leadership. The students worked on projects designed on basic amenities like housing, food and traffic management, and health services. They were fairly successful too.

Welingkar also has a Venture Mentoring Platform
Yes, it is a mentor board comprising entrepreneurs, investors and attorneys who interact with our student ventures on a regular basis. They provide views on the concepts of ventures, the business model adopted, target groups identified, and create a set of deliverables to be achieved by the ventures before the next interaction. Thus, the venture’s plans get refined over a yearlong series of interactions and start-ups get spun off the campus. By a conservative estimate, we have over 33 successful ventures that have taken off from this platform in the past three years.

Follow Link For More Detail: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/jobs/education-warrants-a-substantial-allocation-of-resources-funds-focus-uday-salunkhe/214430