UC Berkely and AICTE, in collaboration with the Smart Village Movement, selected a group of students from the 2020-22 Batch of ASB Amritapuri to join The Business Innovation and Analytics Program.
Recently, UC Berkeley entered into a five-year MoU with AICTE to accelerate digital education in India and prepare Indian youth with skill sets needed to meet the demands of the digital economy. The project-based program was organized by distinguished faculty from UC Berkeley, as well as mentors who are senior and retired executives from Silicon Valley firms.
We interacted with professors from Haas School of Business, UC Berkely, and learnt several new concepts. Moreover, the Smart Village team from Meghalaya also provided guidance on the concepts of constructing long-term business models. The program included social development projects such as access to education, pre-primary education, rural connectivity, E-Buddies programs etc. The objective was to provide sustainable and scalable solutions that would transcend topographical and social challenges currently constraining the local denizens from upscaling their lives and livelihoods.
We spent 3 months developing viable, scalable and sustainable business models addressing socio-economic bottlenecks in rural Meghalaya. In addition to fine-tuning our business modelling skill-set, we also extended our knowledge horizons and successfully formed global partnerships to generate local solutions for national projects.
We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Rajiv Nair, our principal, for informing us about such a fantastic initiative and for his invaluable support and contributions through the entire duration of the project. Constant encouragement and counselling by him and the faculty, also contributed to the performance of the ASB cohort, culminating in us being invited to continue as project leaders for as long as we could.
Working with the University of Berkeley Haas faculty for three months was extremely beneficial to in starting my career. It provided me significant advantages in the placement process particularly with respect to presentation styles, content, and Business plans. During my interview with Accenture, the certification in an extremely pertinent domain such as access to education technology also helped me stand out from the group.
