The Early Bird
As this is the official blog of E-Cell IIT Roorkee we are obliged to inform you that E-Cell has been spreading the spirit of entrepreneurship in IITR for over 12 years now and is the proverbial early bird in terms of ‘cells with a long-term vision’ here in Roorkee. But as with anything else in Roorkee, we must admit that we are way behind our objective as compared to most of our counterparts in other IITs which are way behind most of their counterparts globally. They say with acceptance begins growth, they never tell you how? Here goes…
IIT R is a high placement centric institute with students thinking little beyond pay packages as they approach their pre-final year in the institute. The others seem to care about CAT percentile scores for going into the coveted IIMs where their main purpose is finding a job with a good pay package. As a society, we believe that we must be capable of envisaging better objectives than a 7 figure salary. It is surprising that as an institute, we come up with very few people interested in research, entrepreneurship and offbeat careers like liberal arts and performing arts. There are a few who claim that they are excited about starting up, but the excitement seems to die down after getting a decent job, or getting enough grades that may get one a decent job.
So with this mindset, how will an Entrepreneurship Cell not fail, it seems like treason against the societal mindset. People associated entrepreneurship with starting up and that is precisely the root cause of our failure. Entrepreneurship is a way of life, useful to a fund manager at Goldmann as well as a project manager at NASA. It teaches you how to get things done. It’s not about just B-plans and lectures from ordinary first generation entrepreneurs. So essentially entrepreneurship is learning to be resourceful, to be result oriented coupled with some risk-taking ability.
With this end view in mind, we present to you a new and reformed E-Cell which accepts a holistic view about entrepreneurship. An E-Cell which is eager to see interesting B-plans and help them come into reality through mentorship and incubation, an E-Cell which encourages the IITR junta to explore various career options beyond core and non-core through events like E-Summit, Hult Prize On-Campus and Endeavour Entrepreneurship and an E-Cell which benefits the entire Roorkee junta by creating an open network of students for the discussion of ideas through fruitful bakar and more.
As for the blog, this is an open blog and you can contribute your opinions and suggestions for improving the campus entrepreneurship culture. Mail your posts to ecell@iitr.ac.in and keep watching this space for more.
