Seed money released for govt school students

A sum of Rs 17.26 lakh, flagged to be released to students under the Business Blaster scheme, has been transferred to the accounts of principals of 129 government schools in Ludhiana district. The funding comes following ideas submitted by the selected students for starting small businesses.

Giving details, DEO (Secondary) Dimple Madaan said that it was a kind of motivation to the students who came up with different innovative ideas for startups.

A total of 15,505 students from the various government schools had floated sent in their ideas, including ideas of T-shirt printing, candle making and food enterprises. A total of 6,232 students were selected using a criteria-based process. Each selected students is to be given Rs 2,000 to start the business.

The programme was started in November 2022 with just 32 government schools in the state but later, was expanded to cover all the schools. Teams of approximately six-seven students each were made and were given guidance by the schoolteachers.

The maximum of over 450 students were selected from GSSS, PAU, while there were other schools in the peripheral areas where just about two-three students were selected for the project.

In the first phase, the seed money was released early while this time, it took more than seven months.