Hyderabad: The Shuruaat Bus made its first stop in Hyderabad today at the Maulana Azad National Urdu (MANU) University open air theatre and welcomed by an audience of several hundred students and distinguished speakers to promote entrepreneurship and innovation.
Chief Guest Janab Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, Minister for Minority Affairs, Government of India, graced the occasion with his presence to address the importance of entrepreneurship as an empowering force. Mr. Zafar Sareshwala, Chancellor MANUU, presided over the function.
Guests of Honour joined the event and addressed the crowd, including Mr. K.T. Rama Rao, Minister of Information Technology, Telangana State, Lieutenant General (Retd) Syed Ata Hasnain, Visiting Fellow of the Vivekananda International Foundation, Ms. Anna Roy, Advisor, NITI Aayog, and Mr. Shiv Vikram Khemka, Chairman, The Global Education & Leadership Foundation.
The Shuruaat Bus is on a journey across India to empower citizens to become entrepreneurs and job creators by creating a mindset change as well as supporting promising ideas that address India’s pressing social and economic issues. This is an initiative of The Global Education and Leadership Foundation (GELF) and Facebook in partnership with NITI Aayog on the Road to GES. The Shuruaat Bus is driven by Apollo Tyres, and covered and broadcast by NDTV. This is the lead up to the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017.
Special insight into the challenges of entrepreneurship across geographies and sectors was given by Mr. Ravi Mantha, Author & Serial Entrepreneur, and Mr. Srikant Bolla, Founder & CEO of Bollant Industries. Dr. Shakeel Ahmad, Pro Vice-Chancellor was also present.
The event concluded with dozens of pitches by aspiring entrepreneurs as part of the Shuruaat Bus’s 100 second pitch challenge, conducted across the country as part of the movement to give people a platform to take ideas into action, and beyond.
The Bus will now spend some time with the T-Hub team at their T-Day at HITEX, and will then be stationed at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad from 28-30.
The Shuruaat Bus was launched at IIT Delhi on 14 November 2017, where it was flagged off by Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Aayog. It has since stopped in Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Pune, and Bangalore.
This year, the theme of GES is Women First, Prosperity for All; to contribute to this conversation, the Shuruaat Bus has brought amazing women to talk about entrepreneurship and about the importance of having women’s presence in business.