One of Darsana’s major objectives is to act as an eco-system for nurturing innovation and promoting startups in Keralam and as an extension to promote socially relevant ventures and social enterprises. 

In December 2020, Darsana launched IGNITE, a program aimed at being the springboard for budding technologists and entrepreneurs. 

Our goal is to support students, technologists, and all inquisitive minds in an ongoing manner to experiment, create, revise, and evolve, with our panel of technical experts and mentors. 

Key objectives of IGNITE:

1. Conduct innovation and entrepreneurship competitions and challenges aimed at the student community to inculcate a culture of inquiry and seed thoughts on social enterprises.

2. Conduct events focussed on rural innovation, to identify innovations by practitioners through their experience. Help improve the existing models, recognise such inventions, and popularise them. 

3. Create a digital platform to store, showcase and popularise social enterprises and rural inventions.

4. Create a B2B and B2C marketplace for social enterprises and rural innovators to launch their business or solution with a low-cost entry barrier.

5. Create a common eco system of various bodies like start-up mission, maker village, IRTC and all such bodies that work on similar goals. 

6. Provide opportunity to on board projects with social goals such as promoting Open-source or open engineering and design. 

7. Create a meeting place for investors, innovators, and entrepreneurs.

8. Be a platform for knowledge sharing through training and workshops.

Ignite - Progress so far

Six years into the program, we have progressed and can claim to be hosting one of the important annual events for selecting innovative projects, with good participation from the educational institutions.

Some of other progress made are as follows:

1. A website is set up for driving IGNITE – www.ignite.darsana.in. 

2. Five Innovation and entrepreneurship competitions were conducted with scores of participants and projects from across Keralam. 25 of these projects were declared winners.

3. Conducted multiple sessions and workshops on different topics related to innovation and entrepreneurship. 

4. A detailed report with SWOT analysis and recommendations was submitted to KTU based on our experience conducting these events for students.

5. A written MOU with Kerala Start Up Mission formalising the collaboration and enlistment of other technology organisations like K-Disc, KTU, DUK and Maker village as partners for our annual innovation and entrepreneurship competition. 

Apart from these, a few products and solutions identified as part of our focus on rural innovators were provided ongoing support, enabling them to improve their product and also raise additional money. One of these is the indigenously designed and manufactured mini excavator by a father-son due team. Our intervention enabled them to improve the technical design and also to get startup funds from various organisations. The second one is Zendalona, an accessibility solution aimed at improving inclusivity of the visually impaired in all possible ways. Our members are actively involved in operational aspects and also have helped in extending unsecured and interest free loan for the operational expenses.

Way forward

In the last 5 years, Ignite has become one of our flagship programs. As an organisation, we have built the required network with the entrepreneurship and technical hubs in our state. We were able to create such a leverage due to the potential Darsana as an organisation holds with the spread and depth of expertise within us. The five years of work done by our members have set the foundation for us to take up more impactful initiatives and this is very much in the realm of possibility. We look forward for more members to join hands to take IGNITE to higher levels.