Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) to nurture start-ups from across India
EDII’s incubator named ‘Centre for Advancing & Launching Enterprises’ (CrAdLE) will nurture start-ups in the fields of manufacturing, food/agri business, renewable energy and healthcare
S Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys is Chairman of CrAdLE’s Advisory Board
India October 24, 2016: Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), an acclaimed International Resource Centre facilitating all facets of Entrepreneurship Development, plans to nurture around 10 start-ups a year at its newly set-up Technology Business Incubator. Named as ‘Centre for Advancing & Launching Enterprises’ (CrAdLE), it will nurture start-ups in the fields of manufacturing, food/agri business, renewable energy and healthcare. S Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys Ltd is the Chairman of CrAdLE Advisory Board and the incubator will be open to selecting start-ups from its students, alumni as well as any other would-be-entrepreneur across India.
Dr. Sunil Shukla, Director of EDII said, “With EDII’s experience of over three decades in the field of various facets of entrepreneurship education and consultancy, our new incubator CrAdLE will foster knowledge-based start-ups by nurturing them at an early stage. EDII’s incubator aims to encourage new venture creation in the country and bridge the communication gap among academia, financial institutions and industry. CrAdLE’s aim is to nurture at least 50 start-ups over the next five years and generate a few thousand direct and indirect jobs.”
Chairman of CrAdLE Advisory Board, S Gopalakrishnan said, “Technology Business Incubators are need of the hour to facilitate rapidly evolving start-up eco-system in the country. We are also going to encourage student entrepreneurship for students who wish to start their ventures while studying.”
Mr. Mayank Patel, Faculty-EDII and CEO, CrAdLE said, “Technology business incubation is the natural extension of EDII's present expertise in the areas of entrepreneurial education and research. We at CrAdLE shall provide start-ups not only the physical space to work from, but also mentoring by technology, law, marketing, taxation, finance and other experts to scale up their operations, accelerate their growth and reduce probability of failure.”
EDII’s incubator will also facilitate speedy commercialisation of technologies developed in academic and R&D institutions and create a robust network for better and faster enterprise growth.
About Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII)
Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII) is an acclaimed International Resource Centre facilitating all facets of Entrepreneurship Development. EDII’s mission is to be a catalyst in facilitating emergence of competent first generation entrepreneurs and transition of existing SMEs into growth-oriented enterprises through entrepreneurship education, training, research & institution building.
EDI’s mission has led to the emergence of several programmes under strategically planned centres to generate awareness, sensitise environment, strengthen institutional linkages and networking and impart training in specialised areas. EDII’s focus areas are: 1) Entrepreneurship Education & Research; 2) Micro Enterprises, Micro Finance and Sustainable Livelihood; 3) SMEs & Business Development Services; 4) Cluster Competitiveness, Growth & Technology; 5) Social Entrepreneurship & CSR; 6) Women Entrepreneurship & Gender Studies.
EDII is an autonomous and not-for-profit institute, set up in 1983, and is sponsored by apex financial institutions - the IDBI Bank Ltd., IFCI Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd. and the State Bank of India (SBI). The Government of Gujarat pledged twenty-three acres of land on which stands the majestic and sprawling EDI campus. To pursue its mission, EDI has helped set up twelve state-level exclusive entrepreneurship development centres and institutes. One of the satisfying achievements, however, was taking entrepreneurship to a large number of schools, colleges, science and technology institutions and management schools in several states by including entrepreneurship inputs in their curricula. In view of EDI's expertise in Entrepreneurship, the University Grants Commission had also assigned EDI the task of developing curriculum on Entrepreneurship and the Gujarat Textbook Board assigned to it the task of developing textbooks on Entrepreneurship for 11th & 12th standards.
In the international arena, efforts to develop entrepreneurship by way of sharing resources and organising training programmes, have helped EDI earn accolades and support from the World Bank, Commonwealth Secretariat, UNIDO, ILO, British Council, Ford Foundation, European Union, ASEAN Secretariat and several other renowned agencies. EDI has also set up Entrepreneurship Development Centre at Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam and is in the process of setting up such centres at Uzbekistan and five African countries. In recognition of its international achievements, the United Nations Economic & Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (UN-ESCAP), Bangkok, Thailand, has declared EDI as a 'Center of Excellence'.