Due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, a large number of educated youths who had earlier migrated out of the state in search of employment opportunities have come back and many have expressed their desire to stay back and seek livelihood opportunities within the state even after the crisis is over. This will present a new challenge to the state government as jobs are limited and not many new opportunities would come up immediately after the crisis is over. In the absence of employment and gainful engagement opportunities, there is a high probability that these youths may become restless and that may lead to social disturbances. In order to provide opportunities to these youths and tap on their varied exposures that they gained while working outside the state, it’s important that the government comes up with innovative options for engaging these youths. Startup entrepreneurship could be that vehicle. This will not only engage these youths, but also provide livelihood opportunities to others who could work in these startups. Further, this initiative will also help the State to increase its GDP. Assam Startup can lead this initiative through a structured program.

Basic Objectives of the Program

• To provide an avenue for gainful engagement of youths returning back to Assam due to Covid-19 through Startup Entrepreneurship.
• Facilitate the growth of at least 25 – 50 new Startups from this segment over the next 3 – 4 months.
• Create up to 1000 direct and indirect employment opportunities over the next 12-18 months.
• Develop a culture of problem solving and entrepreneurship in the State.

The Program

This is a structured bridge incubation program that would be completely virtual and would run for 3 – months using our existing digital platforms. The selected participants would undergo 3 virtual Bootcamps which will provide curated knowledge capsules on various aspects of building a startup. There will be regular focused group mentoring sessions conducted by IIMCIP pool of experts through webinars and video conferencing. The program will culminate with the startups developing their POCs. Those which can develop and demonstrate POCs during the program will be eligible for the ‘Idea to POC’ grant of Rupees Five Lakhs to take their POCs forward. And these startups will also get lateral entry into the regular incubation program.

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