About NIF

National Innovation Foundation (NIF), an autonomous society, was set up by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, in March 2000. It is committed to making India innovative by documenting, developing, commercializing and protecting intellectual property rights of grassroot innovators and traditional knowledge holders at grassroots. In the last some years, NIF has mobilized more than 70,000 innovations and instances of traditional knowledge from across India.

About E&C club, IIM Indore

The E&C club was established in 2004 with the purpose of fostering the entrepreneurial spirit of the participants of IIM Indore and nurturing them to be successful leaders. The club pursues the vision of “becoming the most respected consulting club and centre of entrepreneurial activities across management schools.” Please click here for more….

Disha- An Introduction

With the objective of fulfilling NIF’s larger goal of up scaling grassroot innovations and instances of traditional knowledge, NIF presents DISHA- an Annual Business Plan Competition which gives students an opportunity to convert innovations and traditional knowledge at grassroots into practical business propositions. DISHA is organized this year by the Students’ Club for Augmenting Innovations (SCAI) & the Entrepreneurship & Consulting (E&C) Club, of IIM Indore.

What this is all about?

DISHA presents the ultimate challenge of converting an innovation into a workable business proposition.

Phase 1: Submission of SoP: The process starts with the submission of a Statement of Purpose & Team details by the participating teams. Shortlisted teams will be intimated by e-mail.

Phase 2: Allocation of Innovation: The selected teams shall be provided with an abstract of the innovation from the database of NIF & SCAI. The innovations shall be allocated on the basis of the proximity of the student groups to the innovator, as the students are expected to meet the innovator for details with respect to the business plan. 

Phase 3: Preparation of Business Plan: The teams are expected to work, in regular interaction with the innovator, upon the allotted idea and frame a business plan to commercialize the same.

DISHA serves the primary objectives of-

·         Enabling students synergize their business acumen with grassroot genius. In the process, they can bring their classroom learning into practice and understand the ground realities of setting up enterprises.

·         Grassroot innovations and indigenous knowledge examples can be taken up by the students for setting up their own enterprise and commercializing the innovations.

·        These business plans would be useful for NIF in approaching the prospective entrepreneurs and mentors who would help convert these innovations into products and enterprise/commercialize the same in market.

Initial Registration

The group shall consist of maximum FOUR members. Initially you can send us names of TWO or more members of the team with the following details:-

Team name: College Name, Team Name

Team members info: Name, Institution, Year of Study, Postal Address, Email and Phone no

Along with the team details you also need to send a Statement of Purpose (max 300 words) stating why you would like to take part in this competition and why do you think your team will be a winning team. SoPs will be the selection criterion in case of high number of registrations.

As mentioned initially a team may opt to register with fewer members. If the team is selected then additional members, if any, may be added anytime before 12^th December 2007. Similarly, any other change in the team’s composition or profile could be made before 12^th December 2007.

You might wish to include students from the relevant background in your teams. Please note, all four members need not be from the same institution. They may be students from neighboring educational institutions (from engineering, medicine, pharmacy, agriculture or any other stream). Students of all the graduate and post graduate streams are allowed to participate.

Please mail back your team details and the SoPs (as an attachment in .doc format with the name College Name_Team_Name.doc) to nif.disha@gmail.com & scai@nifindia.org. The header of the mail should be “College Name _ Team Name.”

Deadline

Deadline for registration & submission of SOP is 11:59 P.M., 3^rd December 2007. Further details shall be communicated to the selected teams.

The Booty

* For the team, which will successfully implement its business plan in the most effective manner (be able to bring an innovation to the market through a technology transfer or setting up an enterprise). In this case, the time limit can be extended till the end of current financial year. 

In case of any dispute, jury's decision will be final. All the ideas generated as a part of Disha are a property of NIF.