EThames College Launches EThames ELabZ in Partnership with TiE and IIIT Hyderabad

Hyderabad: EThames College, one of the few distinguished degree colleges in Hyderabad that aims to provide experiential learning through industry connect, has announced their flagship incubation program, "EThames ELabZ". Intending to seed the idea of pursuing entrepreneurship in students’ minds, EThames College has designed the EThames ElabZ incubation programme in partnership with well-reputed startup ecosystem players like TiE and IIIT Hyderabad. The programme was launched today by Sri. Navin Mittal, IAS Commissioner of Technical and Collegiate Education, Govt. of Telangana, Murali Bukkapatnam, Vice Chairman, TiE Global, Suresh Raju, President, TiE Hyderabad, Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, Head of CIE, IIIT Hyderabad, and Kali Prasad, Chairman, EThames College.

India has the third-largest ecosystem for start-ups in the world and is expected to witness rapid YoY annual growth of more than 15%. As enterprises realise the disruptive potential of start-ups and more and more VCs are eager to invest in them, there are unlimited opportunities for students to take up entrepreneurship at a very early age and realise their dreams. The Indian economy is also growing rapidly, creating more and more opportunities to create consumer brands at the national and international levels. With the sole objective of enabling students to pursue entrepreneurship through a series of programmes and activities that will progressively channel students’ entrepreneurial energies, EThames College has launched this exclusive incubation program.

Speaking at the launch of EThames ELabZ, Kali Prasad Gadiraju, Chairman – EThames College, said, "We are privileged to launch our EThames ELabZ in collaboration with our esteemed partners TiE and IIIT Hyderabad. To inspire the students and instil the spirit of entrepreneurship at a young age, we have developed a first-of-its-kind innovative program, EThames ElabZ, for non-engineering students.

"While we have witnessed incubation programmes developed at universities and engineering colleges, this is the first time we are introducing an incubation programme at the graduation level that focuses on inspiring the students to build consumer brands and brick and motor companies, which will create more employment."

The EThames ELabZ programme was designed by industry experts keeping in mind the students’ ability to think, grasp, and perform to meet the intricacies of a good startup. The programme flow of EThames ELabZ is as follows:

1. Inspire – Raising awareness of entrepreneurship and inspiring students to pursue it through outreach meetups, motivational talks, and AMA sessions, among other things.

2. Foundation—Provide fundamental entrepreneurship knowledge through a customer-designed course curriculum that integrates with Coursera and TiE programs.

3. Discover: Creating a community of students with innovative ideas through student-led e-clubs, organising hackathons, startup idea pitching competitions, etc.

4. Idea-validation: Provide a framework to develop ideas through idea validation bootcamps, structured short mentorship programs, and sessions from entrepreneurs.

5. Seeding—Help students develop their ideas by providing a small seed fund.

6. Nurture – Assist students in transitioning from an idea to a business by providing office space, legal and secretarial services, labs, and other resources, as well as pre-incubation programs.