Parul university organised first ever Vadodara Startup festival

Vadodara Start-up festival lights up the entrepreneurship skills in the minds of over 3000 students

Redefining the traditional higher educational practices by making business entrepreneurship an integral part of its curriculum and making its students industry ready, city based Parul University organised its first ever edition of Vadodara Startup Festival. This proves to be the idea sharing and nurturing platform and successfully brought together prominent business personalities, upcoming entrepreneurs and student innovators under a common roof to discuss and explore the scope of startups in India.

As a way of creating the ideal ecosystem for startup innovation, the festival hosted leading industrial icons and eminent personalities which include Varad Ranjan Krishna Co-founder of 100 Open Startups as the Chief Guest, along with Hiranmay Mahanta amongst others. The festival acted as the much needed platform for bringing the industries into the campuses allowing students to put their theoretical knowledge into practise and to provide real time innovative solutions to the world.

Inline with Parul University’s agenda towards promoting a culture of entrepreneurship amongst its students, this event was one amongst the many startup related programs the University has been putting together. The first edition of Vadodara Startup festival commenced from the 28th to the 29th of January, and successfully lit the entrepreneurship skills in over 3500 students actively engaged with this festival.

The start expo held during this fest, hosted exhibitions for 67 startups, showcasing their innovative ideas and at the same time inspiring the students of Parul University to manifest their ideas into a business reality. Beyond the scope of innovation, the festival was also focused on enhancing the students’ practical and industrial exposure and also went on to provide various avenues for student internships where over 430 students received their letters for summer internships.

During the opening ceremony the Chief guest of the festival, Varad shared with the student entrepreneurs the significance of education in the success of every entrepreneurship journey. He further went on to highlight how today’s entrepreneurs are focused on trading entrepreneurship. The event also included 3 panel discussions centred on various contemporary subjects which include startup funding, social entrepreneurship, and startup-industry connect, where various speakers shared their ideas with the students. In addition 24 sessions were also conducted by various mentors in the startup community, which focused on some of the most significant aspects of entrepreneurship.

“With the ever growing scope of business ecosystems, which are continuously being fuelled by numerous forms of entrepreneurial innovations in the various sectors of the economy, I genuinely believe that it has become a matter of great importance for us as members of the academia, to play a pivotal role of inculcating the fundamentals of business innovation, during the course of the student’s academics, and I believe Vadodara Startup Festival has managed to do just that”, said Dr Shantanu Chakravarty the University’s head of Entrepreneurship Development Cell.

The festival also included a series of events such as startup expo, investor engagement sessions, startup Internship carnival, startup branding and marketing and Industry startup connect. These events provided the budding entrepreneurs of Parul University with a comprehensive knowledge base regarding how to launch and navigate startups within India’s business ecosystem.

Some of the the startup stories exhibited during this two day festival include, Briquettes Using Organic Waste Materials an alternative form of fuel used as manure in agriculture, RAYA facto a successful brand in kitchenware and general steel-ware, AR Explorer an augmented reality app which uses image detection for augmenting videos or 3D Models on Newspapers, Business Brochures and Educational Books amongst others.

“By organising this startup festival, I believe It has acted as the much needed platform for developing and enterprising the new and innovative ideas of our students, by creating this ideal atmosphere for nurturing and manifesting ideas into a practical reality. As a University we will continue to perpetuate this culture of entrepreneurship and inculcate industrial principles and competencies within our students, during the course of their academics”, said the University’s President, Dr Devanshu J Patel.