Ideas are a dime a dozen, but the ability to recognise one with potential and working on it is the real challenge. To shape innovation and equip students with enough skills to nurture their idea, T-Hub, India’s pioneering innovation ecosystem, has initiated T-Tribe, an academic membership programme. Through mentorship, required resources and all the support needed, T-Tribe will promote early-stage innovations and direct student entrepreneurs in the right direction. "Students need to become knowledge seekers and they need to have a perpetual thirst to learn because in the future, jobs will change and they will have multiple careers. They will have to unlearn and upskill themselves constantly," opines Ravi Narayan, CEO, T-Hub. With T-Tribe, he hopes that they are able to shape young minds in this direction.
Two to go
There are two aspects to T-Tribe, Master Class and Launchpad. Launchpad is a one-year entrepreneurship platform specifically designed for those educational institutions that already house entrepreneurship or incubation cells. Through this, T-Hub will help these institutions with the specific challenges they face when it comes to entrepreneurship and will also offer mentorship, workshops, discussions and so on and guide the cells to be process-driven and successful. Through Master Class, 70 students who are innovators will be selected for advanced mentoring from T-Hub which will help them work on their potential ideas and turn them into viable business propositions. "We want to help them think in an entrepreneurial way, if a start-up comes out of it, great. But our focus is to help them understand the nuances of embarking on the journey of entrepreneurship. They need to learn how to take control of their own destiny, learn how to solve problems and so on," says the alumnus of IIT Madras.
T-Hub aspires to partner with educational institutions of seven states for T-Tribe. They want to set up satellite centres in partnership with them. Though T-Hub has initiated this programme in challenging times, Ravi believes that at least 80 per cent of the programmes can be pulled off digitally. "The advantage is that since students will be applying to T-Tribe, they will be self-motivated and we will have their attention from the word go," says Ravi. Applications are already open for students and they plan to begin the programme this month.
Be the change
Speaking of entrepreneurship in today’s times, Ravi first and foremost states that every industry is in a disarray because of the pandemic and as a result, every job is unstable. "If you are not the kind of person who can step up and learn continuously, it is difficult to remain employable. Skilling and reskilling is the need for everyone. Ability to learn new things is slowing doing which is why so many people are unemployable," he emphasises. So those start-ups who are able to revisit all that they have understood about the market with an open mind and bring about a change in how they do things, they will stay afloat, says Ravi. "Older start-ups have a certain incumbency and pressure but it is the younger start-ups who still have room to change therefore, they will come out much stronger," he concludes.
To know more, check out t-hub.co/t-tribe
