The education and entrepreneurship initiatives took shape with the ATL Student Entrepreneurship Program launch in January 2019. This program was initiated by Dell Technologies in collaboration with Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, and Learning Links Foundation as an implementation partner.The ATL Student Entrepreneurship Program (ATL SEP) aimed to empower the top innovations from the ATL Marathon 2017 by helping them transform their innovative prototypes into fully functioning, scaled, and market-ready products. This comprehensive 10-month program provided students with support in various areas, including mentoring, technical assistance, product marketability, funding and incubation opportunities, and patenting.
The top 6 teams of this program had the opportunity to undergo an internship program at Dell Technologies’ R&D facility located in Bengaluru in July 2019. During the internship, student innovators received continuous mentoring support to manufacture fully functional market-ready products, patent their ideas/processes, and launch their products into the market.
Following the resounding success of the ATL Student Entrepreneurship Program and recognizing the importance of integrating entrepreneurial skills into the school ecosystem, the Student Entrepreneurship Program (SEP) 2.0 was launched in 2020. This new iteration brought exciting changes to the landscape of innovator-driven entrepreneurship.
Through SEP 1.0 and 2.0, young innovators were able to develop 13 unique and viable solutions for the country. These solutions were all locally designed, available at affordable prices, and aimed to address community problems. The 10-month journey for both SEP 1.0 and 2.0 programs allowed young innovators to complete the product testing stage and make necessary modifications based on collected feedback. Additionally, innovators had the opportunity to protect the intellectual property rights of their innovations by submitting patent applications to the Indian patent office. As a result, these innovators successfully established their market presence through product websites, registration on e-commerce portals, and the establishment of their own companies.
The remarkable success of these entrepreneurship initiatives paved the way for the launch of programs like SheCodes and ShePreneur. SheCodes was introduced in 2020, while ShePreneur followed in 2022, both in collaboration with AIM, NITI Aayog, and Learning Links Foundation.