21st-century skills. 10 Indian states. 1 Goal: Entrepreneurial Mindsets!

What would today’s youth build their future upon, if not education??

Living in an era of constant change, traditional education needs to be supplemented with 21st-century skill sets & real-world experiences for them to truly grow. This calls for an entrepreneurial mindset development - one that builds in the practices of grit, determination, communication skills, critical thinking, self-awareness, exploring new things and so on.?

With this goal to inculcate a futuristic mindset in students, we engage with education ecosystems like state governments, school leadership & teachers to co-create mindset learning curricula & tools to help students act independently & make informed choices.?

We are currently working across schools & ITIs in 10 states of India, through Large Scale Implementation (LSI) of these curricula & training. Here is a glimpse into the work we do in partnership with the stakeholders.

Haryana

We have been working in Haryana for the past 3 years in collaboration with the Government ITI Department & entrepreneur-mentors from different fields. Together, we had the opportunity to explore large-scale projects such as ‘Employability Skills Project in 54 ITIs’, 'Post Program Engagement’ with the alumni, ‘Udhyami Haryana Entrepreneurship Project in 82 ITIs’ & much more. We piloted these in the form of programs like ‘funDoo’, ‘Live Entrepreneur Interactions’, & ‘Call a Kaahani’.

‘funDoo is a chatbot accessible through WhatsApp which reached 2 lakh users last year with its 3 learning pathways with over 100 curated tasks for learners.?

Our Online Entrepreneurship Programme (OEP) also helped students from 38 schools in India to work on their entrepreneurial potential.?

Call-A-Kahani, our IVR based learning platform, took a unique storytelling approach to help students understand and relate to the entrepreneurial mindset!?

Enabling learners to develop their skills & mindsets via the Employability Skills Project & watching their businesses grow under the Udhyami Haryana Program has been a true pleasure for our team.?

Here’s the short success story of one of our students from the Udhyami Haryana program - Dharmvir, who owns Nagar Electric & Construction Company. The lessons learned in the program, he applied in his existing venture - which helped him adapt the strategy of customer feedback & even diversify his business into tent house work.?

It’s stories like these that encourage us to spread our roots across the country.?

Kerala

Our Kerala team created meaningful partnerships & connections with stakeholders to scale our impact to 42000+ students across 200+ institutions through our partner-enabled model. We also designed a televised broadcast of our Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum aimed to impact 50000+ students across all ITIs in the state, in association with Kite Victers Channel. In a series of 10 episodes, entrepreneurial mindset skills were delivered with inspiring personalities making an appearance to share their stories.?

In partnership with Industrial Training Department (ITD), Govt. of Kerala, we successfully completed Phase-I of ‘Entrepreneurial Mindset Program’ (EMP) with 69 government ITIs & initiated Phase-II in collaboration with the Department of ITI, Govt of Kerala.?

Maharashtra

In Maharashtra, we partnered with the Directorate of Vocational Education & Training (DVET) & scaled up to 150 ITIs across the state in just a few months. The program was institutionalised with the appointment of 9 instructors from Phase 1 as Mentor Instructors to mentor another batch of 150 new instructors. The metric of institutionalisation enables impact at scale as existing systems (for example, the government education system) adopt the programs (and concepts behind them) and run them independently, resulting in long-term, sustained impact.?

We also piloted an incubation program in ITIs with 20 learners aiming to help them become entrepreneurs upon graduation. Out of this, 11 learners are now business owners earning between Rs. 7-50 thousand per month. The program will now be launched on a larger scale to cover 50+ ITIs in Maharashtra.

As they say, big journeys begin with small steps. Our small steps have begun across other states in India as well like Punjab, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Karnataka, Assam, Nagaland & Andhra Pradesh. Our teams are exploring & implementing similar projects & programs across these regions in collaboration with various partners in the education ecosystem.?

As we witness the real-life impact that these programs have brought about in the lives of students - both young & old - our spirits are inspired & emboldened to continue this journey of #MakingBharatEntrepreneurial.?

Our dreams are big & we trust our teams to keep going. Inculcating an entrepreneurial mindset is not just a mission for us, it’s also our innate mission to practise what we preach & fuel those dreams to the next level.?