India has emerged as a powerful developing economy over the last 70 years. However, it continues to face some of the trickiest development challenges that will require the combined might of youth, entrepreneurship and innovators to develop sustainable solutions. To bridge the gap and take India to the next level, the need of the hour is to come up with innovative solutions to the various socio-economic challenges thereby impacting lives of people at large.
Government of India is actively encouraging Entrepreneurship development and is working closely with key stakeholders in the eco-system to develop multipronged strategies to energise youth to take entrepreneurship as their preferred choice through innovative programmes like Start-up India and Stand up India. Smartfifty is an initiative aligned with the country’s focused approach to promote entrepreneurship driven social development. IIM Calcutta Innovation Park in partnership with DST – GoI, has launched ‘Smartfifty’ – a search for solutions to transform India’. This contest will be covered on NDTV and will identify, recognize & reward aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs and innovators across targeted sectors. Through this TV show, the country desires to seek entrepreneurs with smart ideas to transform India, who, with little help and recognition, may become successful entrepreneurs, creating wealth, solving social problems profitably and generate employment opportunities. This platform is envisaged to evolve, for aspiring entrepreneurs and innovators, as a platform of choice that facilitate their success through strategic networking, seed funding, and mentoring support.
This contest will follow a rigorous multi-stage process to identify promising entrepreneurs. The broad outline of Smartfifty would be as under: