The Business Bytes
TBB BUREAU
NEW DELHI, DEC 15, 2022
NITI Aayog’s Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) and UNDP India on Thursday launched the fifth edition of ‘Youth Co:Lab’ to support young social entrepreneurs.
According to an official statement, the applications for this edition were launched by AIM mission director Chintan Vaishnav and UNDP India Resident Representative Dennis Curry.
Launched in partnership with AIM in 2019, Youth Co:Lab is an UNDP India initiative that aims to establish a common agenda for Asia-Pacific countries to invest in and empower youth to accelerate implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through leadership, social innovation, and entrepreneurship.
The Youth Co:Lab initiative, till date, has been implemented in 28 countries and territories, reaching over 2,00,000 participants, benefitting more than 11,000 young social entrepreneurs and supporting over 1,240 social enterprises, it said.
Speaking about the great opportunities for young and aspiring entrepreneurs, Dennis Curry said. “Young people have the ideas and potential to solve some of the country’s pressing problems through innovation and social entrepreneurship. UNDP is thrilled to launch the 5th Edition of Youth Co: Lab with Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, and provide young inspiring and existing entrepreneurs a platform to scale up their solutions for the common good. This is a unique initiative with young people at the forefront to solve India’s most pressing issues through social entrepreneurship and innovation.”
Through Youth Co: Lab, 30 early-stage start-ups would be supported by the springboard programme, and the best would be provided a seed grant for scaling up their start-up.
