In a bid to nurture entrepreneurial skills among school students, five teams from Jalandhar will be selected to showcase their innovative business ideas at the state- level expo scheduled to be held in July, this year. The selected teams are part of the state government’s flagship Business Blasters Programme, which is currently being implemented in 154 senior secondary schools across the district.
Under the programme, students of Class XI are encouraged to conceptualise business ideas, products or services with the guidance of teachers and test their viability in the real market. The initiative aims to provide early exposure to entrepreneurship, innovation and financial literacy at the school-level.
Explaining this, Narinder Kumar, District Nodal Officer of the initiative in Jalandhar said, “The programme was launched by the state government in 2022. Under this, every Class XI student is provided Rs 1,000 as seed money to work on an innovative idea, product or service that has the potential to generate income. Students are encouraged to interact with the market, assess the feasibility of their products, understand pricing and gather feedback to improve their ideas.”
Kumar further added that best performing students will be shortlisted for the state expo, where they will get an opportunity to present their ideas before business leaders, entrepreneurs and other prominent personalities. The exposure is aimed at helping students understand industry expectations and develop confidence in entrepreneurship.
As part of the initiative, students across schools have developed products including customised spice mixes for specific dishes, homemade pinnis and handcrafted shagun cards among other small scale business ideas. To ensure smooth implementation of the programme, the district has developed a multi-level monitoring structure. Besides the District Nodal Officer, 17 Block Nodal Officers oversee the programme in their respective areas while Assistant Nodal Officers coordinate activities at the school-level.
Interestingly, the Business Blasters Programme was first introduced in Delhi government schools and later adopted by the Punjab government as a pilot project in 2022 before being expanded further. The state government has also widened the scope of the initiative by introducing an entrepreneurship curriculum for Class XII students in November last year to equip them with practical skills related to self-deployment and startups. Kumar further said that the government is now planning to gradually extend the programme to students of Classes IX and X as well.
