BITS Pilani’s rural cooperative

In response to my previous post on the role of academic institutions in building entrepreneurs, Rachit pointed me out the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership at BITS Pilani (yes, we do read your comments!)

The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) at BITS Pilani, was set up for that very purpose, to create entrepreneurial leaders and have a significant impact on the global entrepreneurial community.
We are also one of:

The Centers for Excellence at BITS Pilani

The top 5 centres of Entrepreneurship among Indian Universities

The founders of the National Entrepreneurship Network

More specifically, the center runs a program called Parampara, which is building a self-sustaining women’s cooperative in rural Pilani:

The project is planned to be implemented in three phases:

1. Identifying a group of women and engaging them in an income generation activity to build the foundation of the cooperative
2. Building a self sustained cooperative around the group
3. Bringing in micro-finance into the cooperative to help in growth.

A small cooperative of 21 women has already been setup in a village called Garinda. They call themselves the Saraswati Cooperative and currently manufacture paper bags. More products are being thought of and models to market them being worked out.

It’s important for academic institutions to look around their campus and focus on creating ‘sustained’ change within those communities where they are located. There was a reason why India’s founding fathers wanted to locate premier business and engineering schools in remote corners of the country. Of course, it’s a stark reality that almost all of the graduates from these ivy schools re-locate to a metro or outside the country the moment the graduate. But the BITS initiative is a good example of creating change in the rural community around the campus. We need many more.

P.S. Its quite ironic that BITS decided to locate its newest campus in Dubai!