Srinagar, Aug 21: SKUAST-K Innovation, Incubation & Entrepreneurship Centre (SKIIE) celebrated World Entrepreneurs’ Day, bringing together resident startups, mentors and industry partners under the banner “Stakeholders of Change” for a day-long programme reflecting on Kashmir’s growing entrepreneurship ecosystem.
The session was chaired by Director Education, SKUAST-K Prof. Altaf Mohd Bhat, with Chief Executive Officer of SKIIE delivering the keynote address to an audience of founders, innovators and prospective entrepreneurs.
In his address, Naveed Hamid traced SKIIE’s journey from an idea to an institution that now stands behind more than 125 registered startups across agri-tech, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, deep-tech, food processing and rural enterprise, backed by funding partners including DST New Delhi, i-TBI, BIRAC, MEITY, NABARD and IFAD.
He pointed to the centre’s recent recognition as Start Startup Ecosystem Award and “Incubator of the Year”. when that recognition came with a fifty-lakh seed fund, we didn’t see it as a trophy. We saw it as fifty lakh reasons to go back to work faster.
“This centre does not build startups. You do. We only build the room you build them in,” Naveed Hamid told the audience, urging founders in the audience not to see Kashmir’s biotech and agri-tech challenges as reasons to look elsewhere, but as the very market they were uniquely positioned to serve. He added that SKIIE’s mentors and doors “don’t close when the pitch deck stops being the hard part and the business starts being the hard part.”
Director Education, SKUAST-K Prof. Altaf Mohd Bhat, chairing the proceedings, “commended SKIIE’s role in embedding entrepreneurship into the university’s academic culture and encouraged audience to see startups as a viable career path alongside conventional employment”].
He further deliberated on Entrepreneurs’ Day and quoted let’s stop treating entrepreneurship as an event we celebrate once a year, and start treating it as the daily infrastructure of this university, this valley, this Union Territory.
The “Stakeholders of Change” segment brought together founders from SKIIE’s incubated ventures alongside mentors and partner-institution representatives for an open exchange on the challenges of building biotech and agri-tech companies in Jammu & Kashmir, including funding access, regulatory compliance, and market linkage. The Young champs interacted with Afshan, Founder Baag Manzuk, Founder K R Mushrooms, Founder Noorsa Innovations, Founder Fiam Farms etc.
The Vote of Thanks was presented by Incubation Manager-SKIIE Centre, Abdul Rouf Khan.
