Mangalore: The Inunity valedictory event was conducted on the 14th of March at Ocean Pearl in hybrid mode. The event saw the participation of dignitaries Dr Karisiddappa, Vice Chancellor, VTU, Sanjeev Gupta, (CEO, Karnataka Digital Economy Mission (KDEM) and MD & CEO, Lahari – Government of India Initiative) and Dr S Kumar, Executive Secretary, COMED-K in virtual mode and Gaurav Hegde President of CII Mangaluru Chapter, Past Chairman, Jeevan Saldanha Immediate Past Chairman CII Mangalore and Dikshith Rai, CEO, CodeCraft Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
The graduation program recognised the accomplishments of young budding entrepreneurs and felicitated the shortlisted 52 students from a pool of 530 aspirants who have successfully developed entrepreneurial ideas in a span of 4 months to help solve various local challenges. The principals and coordinators of various colleges in the Mangaluru region encouraged the students with their gracious presence.
Dr Karisiddappa, Vice-Chancellor, VTU, appreciated InUnity for its wonderful initiative and urged the grown entrepreneurs, universities and students to support the same.
Madan Padaki expressed his amazement about the ideas of the student and the energy of the entrepreneurs. He also extended a 1-year free membership of TiE Bangalore to all the InUnity students.
Dr S. Kumar, Executive Secretary, COMED-K, addressed on how to promote Innovation Entrepreneurship and how the networking of professional institutions support institutions like InUnity. Comed-K extended its support to InUnity and offered to partner with InUnity to develop 8 Regional Centres of Excellence across Karnataka with at least 12 Engineering Colleges attached to each centre.
Sanjeev Gupta in his keynote address expressed in various ways how organizations like KDEM can be an impetus for promoting entrepreneurship in emerging clusters of Karnataka. And how various industry associations and organizations like Inunity can come together to bring together to build entrepreneurial aspirations in youth.
The InUnity is a pilot program in partnership with Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) and Confederation of Indian Industries Mangaluru. It was initiated with a vision of identifying entrepreneurial youth across the Mangaluru region, to solve local challenges. This was launched in September 2021. Prominent organizations and institutions such as Syngenta Foundation, College of Fisheries and the Department of Fisheries, and Krishi Vigyan Kendra of Dakshina Kannada, collaborated with InUnity to identify local problems that needed solutions. The program had 9 teams who successfully developed their solutions as a business model in the fields of agriculture, finance, education, healthcare & SaaS.
In alignment with the vision of leveraging the potential of the youth to become job creators, InUnity took a crucial first step towards developing the next generation of entrepreneurs. Over a period of 4 months, with an outreach to more than 500 students across 15 colleges in Mangaluru, 52 students were able to build a viable solution to solve various local challenges. The program is now poised for further growth and wider adoption across the state.
“Inunity Mangaluru shall be organized as a biannual event collaborating with all the tech and non-tech institutions and industry associations in Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, and Uttara Kannada districts. The cohorts shall focus on mentoring the youth that aspires to build an entrepreneurial career. This, we hope will lead to the creation of 100 startups by 2026” said Johnson Tellis (Co-founder, CEO InUnity LLP)
The program also aims at creating forward linkages for the current cohort, building a network of Investors and Incubators ready to support student startups, and scaling and replicating InUnity’s model. This program will also enlarge the narrative around the success potential of Youth Entrepreneurship and will lend strength to shifting the narrative from job seekers to job creators and problem solvers.
About Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship ( GAME)
GAME is a not-for-profit backbone organization that aims to improve enabling conditions for broad-based entrepreneurship in India and rapid and sustainable growth of the MSMEs that propel the economy and create millions of decent jobs by 2030.
About InUnity Mangaluru:
InUnity Mangaluru is a 4 month program that catalyzes the process of building solutions with business potential by educating and facilitating the interaction between different stakeholders and students with an inclination towards Entrepreneurship or Problem Solving across tech and non-tech institutions of a region.
