Prospects for student Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is acquiring impetus as a influential instrument for exhilarating economic growth in the country. This is a commanding educational means of training business professionals regardless of whether they started a new venture or not. Entrepreneurs see business in a more holistic way than do managers, who often see issues in terms of functional domains.

We live in an increasingly busy world in which the divide between the haves and the have-nots is growing. This requires job creation at rates that are not easily possible for most businesses and Governments. This results in high rate of unemployment among educated youths. This is a major challenge and necessitates Entrepreneurship development programmes.

Numbers of countries are pursuing the opportunities to become new hubs of global business activity through innovation. Even though management education emphasizes profit maximization and shareholder value creation, entrepreneurship envisages maximizing common good and minimizing social injustice and environmental impact.

Entrepreneurship leadership has three principles. They include Cognitive ambidexterity, social, environment and economic responsibility and sustainability and self and social awareness. Developing cognitive ambidexterity has two logics. They are prediction logic as a traditional approach and creation logic which is a decision approach.

An uncertain future can be predicted in the prediction logic whereas creation logic is based on action, discovery and creation. An entrepreneurial leader can use both prediction and creation logics to create new ideas or innovations. Globally entrepreneurial leaders are concerned about social, environment and economic responsibility and sustainability.

Individuals and organizations are increasingly being held accountable for the social, environment economic outcomes of their actions. They must understand the inherent tensions and potential synergies that exist among social, environmental and economic value creation.
Self and social awareness focuses on developing self and social awareness among the entrepreneurial leaders. It involves critical understanding of themselves and the societal context of business opportunities.

Recently as Government of India is giving more thrust to food security and food safety issues, entrepreneurship and innovation management in agriculture/ food processing sectors are emerging as some of the specialization areas in entrepreneurship. Government of India is giving more thrust to food security and food safety issues.

Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University had contributed substantially in this regard with special focus on farmer entrepreneurship for food security; the farmers being the primary producers are the key to local economic growth and sustainable agri-food systems, and food security for all. Promoting students with entrepreneurial capacities to create opportunities for muti-stakeholder action would contribute to availability of qualitatively good food and nutrition and market efficiency with sustainable food chains.

The University student-focused activities include programmes like ‘earn while you learn’ projects, NSS activities, farm and field visits, educating students in cultivating a startup business idea, teaching them basic strategies like estimating costs and writing a project proposal/ business plan etc.Student Entrepreneurship is acquiring momentum across the globe.

Government of Kerala have announced a unique Student Entrepreneurship Scheme to encourage entrepreneurship among the Collegiate level Students of the state. Recently taking in to account the importance of the programme Government of Kerala issued separate guidelines for issuing grace marks and attendance to students during ideation stage, teaming and company formation, technology formation and development of business models. As part of the same Technology Business incubator (TBI) can be established at the campuses so that student entrepreneur can associate with the TBI.

University should establish Directorate of Entrepreneurship to strengthen this sector. Entrepreneurship division give major emphasis to entrepreneurship development, extension, knowledge dissemination, distance learning and awareness programmes.

Rationale of the project: Livestock sector plays an important role in the National economy and in the socio economic development of the country. Livestock production performance has been more impressive than that of food grain production. Milk, egg, meat and fish showed impressive growth rates i.e. 5-10 percent. Livestock represents the only way in which natural vegetation can be converted in to products that can be used by man. This sector has been well knit with the socio-economic fabric of rural economy and plays an important role in the employment and income generation.

The major component through which livestock contributes to the agricultural income are milk and milk products, meat and eggs. These products contribute about one-sixth of the calories and one-third of the proteins in the per capita food supplies of the world; the balance comes from vegetable products. Per capita consumption of livestock products is however, four to five times higher in the developed countries than in the developing countries.

Presuming that one family member is employed in looking after the livestock, 25 million people are estimated to be employed with livestock rearing activity. Dairying and poultry sector is emerging as one of the important livelihood options. Although India has huge livestock population, in terms of trade it is having only a low impact in the world trade of livestock products. However, it is to be noted that India has tremendous potential to produce and export various livestock products.

The high potential of the domestic market coupled with marketing opportunities abroad under WTO regime now render India to an enviable position to cater to the huge global market of livestock products, particularly dairy products. The emergence of India as a net exporter Nation of livestock products is a new trend in exporting group of nations in these products. It is also widely believed that with the ushering in of the agricultural policy reforms in major industrial countries, the demand for livestock products from developing countries, like India, will get a significant boost.

India needs innovation in livestock sector to reach the productivity frontier and to use the best sustainable practices for production. The desire for innovation in India has been driven by search for low cost solutions to food security and food safety issues. Innovation is the application of new ideas to solve problems with resultant benefits to different stakeholders. India needs to create 1.5 Crore jobs per year for the next ten years to provide employment to youngsters. In this juncture accelerating entrepreneurship and creating business are crucial for massive employment generation. Government of India is promoting startups to scale up startup ecosystem in the country. Opportunity for startups was unparalled especially in the food processing sector in the country.

NASSCOM aims to nurture 10,000 startups in the next 10 years and give a major boost to software product development in India. The Startup Warehouse will provide a well-connected, infrastructure for technology startups and will support entrepreneurs in their early stage of operations as well as act as a hub for innovation, collaboration, and entrepreneurship. Innovation in startup ecosystem depends on ideas, validation process and good partner relationship. Major steps in this process are laying the foundation, creating a challenge book, building participation, experimentation with cost, speedy implementation, building innovation sand box and putting a margin of safety. ?