Power Talk │ February 2021│Ready to Startup

increases the accessibility of everyone, making the
discussions and interactions more open and
productive. Another focus that the team has is to
keep experimenting place for creating a market
access network to broaden horizon. We also partner
with academic institutes to encourage budding
entrepreneurs and equip them with right tools and
mindset required for the tedious entrepreneurial
journey
with the existing processes of doing things, with the
intent of refining it further. This practice is also
imbibed by the incubated startups which helps them
to be fairly flexible and on their toes while sailing
their ships in rough weather.
AIC-BIMTECH strives to support the startups in every
possible way, and this can be achieved only after
building a certain level of trust between the
incubator and the start-up. It is only after the trust is
established that the startups can sincerely listen to
the advices and suggestions being made by the
incubator and act upon it. The same trust allows the
startups to also share critical and constructive
feedback for the incubator that helps improve their
functionality, enabling us to serve startups better.
Startup Trends 2021 onwards
Healthcare and EdTech are two industries that have
seen a huge surge due to the impact of COVID
pandemic. This surge is here to stay until the
ultimate product market fitment emerges between
the competition, after the dust settles. The startups
enabling the new “work from home” approach of
the corporates across globe are also a hot trend that
is going to be highly packed. The funding has seen a
shift towards more mature sectors in the
entrepreneurial ecosystem which have low
operational expenditures, but this trend is going to
be relative to the impact of COVID.
Impactful Contribution to Society
Archanna, where there is a will, there is always a
way! I am also the Treasurer for the BIMTECH
Foundation. The Institute runs a number of
voluntary outreach programmes to create a positive
influence in the community and the society at
large. I am personally involved in two projects,
Project Chiraiya [1] and Project Uthan [2] . Project
Power Talk l Ready to StartUp
Chiraiya is run in villages for adolescent girls Project
Uthan is for the inmates of 11 prisons across the
state. Both the projects are fuelled by more than
10,000 hours of voluntary work by the students,
faculty and staff, under the aegis of Dr Chaturvedi,
Director BIMTECH and Dr Rishi Tiwari. The biggest
and foremost benefit for the girls has been the
social acceptance and change in the mind-set of
the village community. The understanding that girls
can lead developmental change, be able to earn
accolades (from people like Sh. Venkaiah Naidu,
Vice President of India & other national level
dignitaries), be social and health agents and earn a
decent livelihood has led to a perceptible change in
the social hierarchy of women and girls in the
village.
In the prison project, the main impact is measured
in two areas, viz., the number of suicides being
reduced due to the inmates coming regularly to the
library and workshops and the number of people
who are going in for education certifications like
secondary, senior secondary, graduation etc. The
main idea is to educate and skill the men and
women prison inmates, so that recidivism is
reduced. Women, especially, have no recourse to a
dignified life of labour and have to either resort to
prostitution or revert back to crime to earn a
livelihood. By educating and skilling them through
various workshops conducted in the libraries, these
women can be brought back into the mainstream.
Both our projects help in the empowerment of the
underprivileged sections of society. Project Chiraiya
is completely dedicated to the up-liftment of rural
adolescent girls (who are at the most vulnerable
age due to social demands of marriage and
dropping out of schools). The Prison project gives
equal opportunities to female and male inmates to
access the libraries and attend workshops, but the
focus is on helping the women inmates in creating
microenterprise
Chiraiya [1
Uthan [2]
‘Chiraiya’ means a small female sparrow in Hindi
‘Uthan’ means regeneration or creating a new devp.