GDC I-NITIATE
GDC I-NITIATE: A Transformative 2-Week Entrepreneurship Program from GDC
GDC I-NITIATE program is a transformative two-week immersion designed to foster entrepreneurial thinking among academic faculty, researchers, and students, while enhancing their business acumen. The program addresses a critical gap in the university startup ecosystem: many students and researchers believe they are ready to launch a startup based on academic research or a brilliant idea, without considering their readiness or capabilities to become founders or understand the fundamentals of business.
GDC I-NITIATE encourages academics to start contemplating how they should perceive the world, free from bias influenced by their innovation or technology, and cultivates the necessary skills for launching a startup in a highly competitive business environment.
The program aims to transform the fundamental approaches and thought processes of faculty, researchers, and students towards innovation, nudging them to explore their core motivations and fears, evaluate their readiness to take risks, and develop critical business insights to make informed entrepreneurial decisions.
About GDC - Established in 2017 at IIT Madras, the Gopalakrishnan-Deshpande Centre for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (GDC) is a non-profit initiative with the goal to foster innovation and entrepreneurship within Indian universities by providing guidance, resources, and programs.
About AIC Banasthali – Established in 2017 as India’s 1st women centric business incubator, AIC has supported over 181 women-led startups, 117 of these have raised over Rs. 2101 Mn in funding, registering 119 IPs and creating over 3000 jobs.
Learnings from the Program:
1. The essence of becoming an entrepreneur
2. Kindle entrepreneurial instincts
3. Timing and readiness
4. How to acquire business acumen
5. How to identify Market Opportunities and evaluate them before deciding the Market and Product.
Eligibility Criteria
Eligibility:
All participants who intend to become founders of a prospective startup, including academic researchers closely involved in the startup's technology, are expected to attend all sessions and be actively engaged throughout the program. The expectation is to commit at least 50% of your working hours to 15 days.
It is mandatory to apply as a team. The team must have at least two Entrepreneur Leads (or co- founders) and one Faculty Lead (faculty/scientist/principal investigator). The core team must have worked together for at least six months on the innovation/technology and be equally keen to explore commercialization of their idea / research.
GDC I-NITIATE
Program Structure
The 2-week GDC I-NITIATE program is structured as follows:
• An online onboarding session (2.5 to 3 hours)
• Three days of face-to-face opening workshops at AIC Banasthali Vidyapith Foundation (lasting 8 to 9 hours each)
• Participants ought to engage in at least 20 conversations (interviews) with experts and key stakeholders to understand the business ecosystem, current practices, policies etc., in addition to desk research (secondary research)
• One online webinar at the beginning of Week Two (4 hours)
• Two or three online office hours per team (each lasting one hour) with a GDC instructor.
• Online closing workshop on the final day (4-6 hours)