Bhubaneswar: On the sidelines of MSME Trade Fair-2017 and Entrepreneurship Week being held here between March 5 to 11 in Bhubaneswar, a seminar session on “Mission 1000 Startups” was held today at the Conference Hall of IDCO Exhibition Ground. L.N. Gupta, IAS, Principal Secretary, MSME highlighted the implementation of the Startup Policy and also outlined the measures and events planned to encourage more and more startups and foster a culture of entrepreneurship in the state. He stated that we are working on sustained basis to achieve the ’Mission 1000 Startups’ by 2020.
Inaugurating the Seminar, Subroto Bagchi, Chairman, Odisha Skill Development Authority congratulated the Team Startup Odisha for the outstanding efforts toward promotion of Startup eco-system in the state. He identified the main traits of an entrepreneur and described him as someone, who has fire in the belly, courage and patience. He should have self-belief, independent thinking to serve customers, hardworking attitude, flexibility to improvise, and the ability to keep their ego aside for the sake of their business. He advised all the budding entrepreneurs to select their domain carefully, choose their tools suitably, follow appropriate methodology and should remain focussed on quality of their product or services.
Vikas Bali, MD, Intellecap said to have funded over USD 600 million across countries, including Milk Mantra in Odisha. Under the programme “Sankalp”, they have been assisting social enterprises in India, Indonesia and Kenya. He added that they search, seed, support and scale up early stage social enterprises. As regards Odisha, he announced that the Startups, who get registered under the Odisha Startup Policy, will be provided access to their virtual incubator namely, “Startup Wave”. He also announced that the best 5 Startups, who qualify for product/marketing assistance under the Odisha Startup Policy, will get focused mentoring by the Intellecap team.
Amit Singh, Co-Founder & M.D., Headstart, one of the largest grass root level organisations, supporting entrepreneurship and startups in the country, announced opening of their Headstart Entrepreneurship Chapter in Odisha during this month. Through this chapter, they would be mentoring entrepreneurs across the state. He mentioned that every year 25,000 entrepreneurs are benefitting from their services. Omkar Rai, DG, STPI said that the largest number of STPI Centres are existing in Odisha, which are in Bhubaneswar, Berhampur and Rourkela. Further, they intend opening 4 new Centres. He suggested that MSMEs and startups working in the IT and electronics sector can avail funding under the Electronic development fund of the Government of India. He assured to work closely with Govt. of Odisha to strengthen the Startup eco-system in the state. Manish Kumar, an IITian turned Researcher-cum-Entrepreneur, who is running an organisation ‘Back 2 Village’ and working mostly on promotion of agriculture in Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, articulated his long journey as an entrepreneur and how he has enjoyed the oil that goes with it. ‘Back 2 Village’ is engaging farmers in Mayurbhanj towards adoption of best farming practices as well as assisting them towards market linkage.