Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship & FINER conduct digital summit

GUWAHATI: The Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) has forayed into the start-up eco system in the NE region through the first of its kind initiative NERES 1.0 Summit: North Eastern Region Entrepreneurship and Start – Ups Summit. NERES 1.0 is organized and promoted by Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE), in collaboration with Federation of Industries and Commerce of North Eastern Region (FINER) and under the sponsorship of North Eastern Council (NEC).  

In this region, the entrepreneurial eco system is still evolving and there is a huge gap in funding initiatives. Many promising ideas are coming up but with the lack of venture funding here in NER, raising funds becomes one of the major constraints for the regional start-ups. Keeping this in mind and with an eye towards boosting the start-up ecosystem of NER, NERES 1.0 was conceptualized with the aim to provide financial aid to 20 winning start –ups as a grant of Rs. 5 lakhs each and continuous handholding in future.

Keeping the context of NER a few priority sectors like Agri and Food Tech, Textile and Handicrafts, Tourism, Waste Management, Services (Education, Retail and Logistics etc), Health & Wellness, IT and ITES, Media and Entertainment were identified after interacting with various stakeholders. Before the global pandemic, various activities like awareness programmes at various locations across the NER, call for applications from start-ups, development of the NERES website (www.neres.org), registration & screening of the applications (200 were shortlisted out of 695 total applications) and the state wise business idea pitching of the 200 ideas under NERES 1.0 were completed from January 2020 to mid-March 2020. The best 50 ideas were shortlisted for the final summit.

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