Name of the Department: IIC Council
Date: Wednesday 09thDecember 2020
Time and duration: 11.00 AM – 1.00 PM
Venue: Online
Resource Person with affiliation: Ms. Neerja Palisetty

Topic on which activity was organised: Lifestyle products handcrafted from waste paper and natural materials

Number of Participants: Students 280 Faculty 9

Objective of the Workshop/Seminar/Activity: The objective of the session was to apprise the participants with the scope of social entrepreneurship and to give the insights about the Journey of a Social Entrepreneur Ms. Neerja Palisetty who is the founder of Sutrakaar Creations.
Overall Report of the activity: IISU- IIC Incubation Centre organized a session on “Lifestyle products handcrafted from waste paper and natural materials”. The event started with the basic introduction about IIC i.e., Institution’s Innovation Council. IIC has been designed to inculcate the innovative ideas and to bring more business awareness among the students. MHRD and Govt. of India have established MIC (MHRD’s Innovation Cell) to systematically foster the culture of Innovation amongst all the Higher Education Institutes. The main mandate of MIC is to encourage, inspire and nurture the young talent so they can bring their innovative ideas to the current or the future problem and to inspire them to convert those problems into business prototypes. Bringing the session forward I got to know that the major focus of IIC is to create a vibrant local innovation ecosystem, start-up supporting mechanism in HEIs, establish function ecosystem for scouting ideas and pre-incubation ideas and develop better cognitive ability for technological students.
After this, participants were told about the IIC which has been established in IIS University among various other Institutes. ISS has an incubation center with Institution’s Innovation Council which have different cells working with the same sector bringing the innovative ideas, transforming those ideas and mentoring them at each level of their growing stage. Further discussion goes with the purpose of all these councils and cells which are to provide a platform to nurture innovative ideas, to provide training to develop and enhance skills, to give an exposure to inculcate the entrepreneur skills and to participate in activities conducted by MIC. Moving forward discussed the cells in IIC which are Incubation center, Innovation activity cell, startup activity cell, internship cell, IPR cell and chrysalis E-cell all these cells have certain goals and they also perform certain kind of activities related to their functional areas.
Going forward with the session there was a discussion the types of Innovations and Startups which are Technical and non-technical, Startups which are promoting sustainable living and nurture and empower the next generation entrepreneurs to address the local and regional needs and there are various sectors in which we all can work together upon like foreign trade, Fashion and Textiles, Supply chain management, etc.
After the brief introduction of IIC the interactive session got started. Dr. Aditi welcomed Ms. Neerja Palisetty founder and director of Sutrakaar Creations. In this business, Ms. Neerja makes lifestyle product handy crafted from waste paper and natural materials which is a very good example of Social Entrepreneurship. Her aim to create eco-friendly textile products made from paper waste, recycled paper and natural materials as a step towards sustainable future provide employment to weavers and women and promote fair trade, craft empowerment, zero-waste, and ethical fashion. Strings of tradition are woven together to form the fabric of legacy SUTRAKAAR.
It’s about the beliefs and skills transcending from one generation to the next and adapting to the contemporary fashion sensibilities. Socially and environmentally conscious, it attempts to bring a systematic transformation to the definition of luxury fashion. “80 percent up cycled” waste yarn is fashioned into accessories like pouches, handbags and gifting items.
Ms. Neerja also showed the products that are the bags made up of newspapers. She started from women’s product only, but after the demand from men, she is also starting to make products for them as well because everyone likes the amazing product that she is making. At the end there were a Q&A session in which students asked their question to ma’am and she replied each one of them gracefully.

Outcome: From this social entrepreneurship webinar, which was highly inspirational, Participants got to learn how can they seek more knowledge about social entrepreneurship, how can know more about it, how to analyze a social cause, how to implement the idea. Participants also got to know that if they want to start a social entrepreneurship with no financial support then how they can go for it, how social entrepreneurship is different for NGO. In countries like India, there is a need for change and we as the young generation can bring that change and can make our nation a better place for everyone.