The second day of the Chief Minister’s Start-Up and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) week commenced here today with workshops on CSR laws, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Conference, Panel Discussions and other programmes to help aspiring entrepreneurs in their Start-Up journey.
Organised by the Promotion and Incubation of Market Driven Enterprises (PRIME) in collaboration with Invest India and Start Up India, the workshops were aimed at helping aspiring businesses, students, leaders, government officials, NGOs, Academia in comprehending the CSR laws, guidelines, policies and funding initiated by the state government through its flagship PRIME initiative to help start-ups and budding entrepreneurs in the state.
Today’s session was divided into two parts, namely Startup India ASCEND Workshop and Invest India CSR Workshop & First Bootcamp Cohort, wherein speakers spoke on a wide range of topics governing the start-up culture, giving insights on what it takes to build a business and sustain them.
Welcoming the audience, Aprajita Saini, Manager, Startup India, highlighted the potential of Meghalaya start-up ecosystem and said that the initiative aims to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation to sensitize the gathering on filling the knowledge gap and make the ecosystem the most thriving programme in the country.
In his special address to highlight the aim and the importance of the workshop, Flo Oberhofer, Program Head, PRIME, pointed out that the session was about learning all the aspects of start-up culture involving entrepreneurs from Meghalaya, North East and from across India.
“We have different entrepreneurs from different backgrounds, including ones from grassroots level. I think this is something which you can look forward to inorder to learn from these entrepreneurs, and at the same time share ideas with them on different aspects of entrepreneurship,” he said.
Taking over the proceedings, Neeraj Kumar Khater (Assistant Manager, Startup India Team) gave a presentation on benefits and incentives for startups, wherein he said that the advantages of receiving recognition under Startup India includes easier public procurement standards, startup pattern applications and IPR applications, tax exemptions from angel tax, and 10000 CRM for startups.
There was also a panel discussion where inspiring entrepreneurs from Meghalaya and North East shared their journey.
The panel moderator for the session was Pranjal Konwar (Chief Operating Officer, IIM Calcutta Innovation Park) and the panelists were Iaishah Rymbai (Founder of Eriweave), Dasumarlin Majaw (Founder of Smokey Falls Tribe Coffee), Bankitlang Nongbri (Co-founder of ECO-RI), Dhruba Jyoti Deka (Co-founder of Brahmaputra Fables) and Dhristi Medhi (Co-founder of Quickyghy).
