Lemon Ideas is on a mission ‘Innovation by Everyone’ and is striving towards empowering talented individuals to convert their ideas into Reality. Here reality stands for Business Ventures. With hundreds of ventures being incubated-mentored & supported, and thousands of entrepreneurs nurtured & trained, Lemon Ideas has become a known name in the startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem over the years. At Lemon Ideas, we believe and follow a unique pedagogy and experimentation approach for real-life entrepreneurs. Lemon offers acceleration and various mentoring programs for startups and seasoned entrepreneurs with innovation and technology as key drivers. Lemon is on a mission to ignite, nurture and support 10K innovators, entrepreneurs and change-makers in 10 years of contribution with a greater focus on building the ecosystem in tier 2 and 3 cities. A strong youth force is a country’s greatest asset. And luckily, India is known to have quite a huge number to leverage for igniting bright minds and boosting innovation. The concern of unemployment can be tackled if as a nation we start focusing on producing jobs rather than merely applying for jobs. So we need to have jobs and ‘Who will create jobs?’ was a question that we thought about and that needs to be answered. Nothing could be better than our own youth creating jobs for many while they hone up their innovative skills and creativity. The major missing component here to showcase the innovation was the lack of proper guidance and encouragement. So there were a few seeding thoughts that went into a kind of a mixer and the mixing element finally came out as Lemon Ideas. The need of the hour is to channelize the energy of people in a meaningful direction. Carving a path out for innovations out of conventional business models and churning out fresh ideas from young minds were amongst the major challenges that demanded positive re-orientation in the ways people are trained or the way they are educated. So, Lemon Ideas came into existence to rethink the solutions to the mentioned challenges. We took our baby steps into the un-seeming world of innovations, training workshops and shaping mere ideas into successful ventures. We constantly strived towards helping people pursue their ideas and innovations. So a year apart, we slowly gained recognition as a start-up and venture space from a pure innovation space. We went for a profit model, where the idea was to make everyone a stakeholder in the complete co-creation effort, trainers & team members were stakeholders in the entire organization and the spirit was clear to co-create it. The predominant rigidity in our conventional education system made our heads scratch for a personal space that had the freedom for our experiments, developing our own pedagogies and executing things based on our beliefs. And that is how the Lemon School of Entrepreneurship happened in 2015. It followed an unconventional design model and was driven by our beliefs of ideal learning and training. We staunchly believed that the ultimate learning is a product of self-realization, self-reflection and insight development. Lemon School of Entrepreneurship (LSE) is a unique new age Gurukul with a vision to support, mentor and train budding as well as early-stage entrepreneurs. The pedagogy is learning by doing, learning through reflections and real-life experimentation.
Lemon School of Entrepreneurship is neither affiliated to any University/ Governing Body nor provides any recognized degree or diploma. We believe that the creation of a work portfolio through experiential learning and pre-incubation training is vital for entrepreneurship. We offer entrepreneurship training programs and business training workshops. We also work with colleges and universities to build a robust ‘Innovation and Entrepreneurship’ ecosystem. It includes pre-Incubation consulting and experiential workshops.
Since 2013, LEMON has slowly evolved as a self-sustaining start-up ecosystem for aspiring entrepreneurs, business owners as well as early-stage start-ups for complete end to end support at various stages of their journey including training, mentoring, ideation, validation, launch, execution, growth as well as fundraising. Lemon is among very few truly entrepreneurial start-up enabler supporting and nurturing job creators in India. The ecosystem has become very fertile for idea seeds to get sprouted and become sustainable ventures. The magic of co-creation and peer learning is instrumental in the transformation of entrepreneurs at Lemon. Lemon is a recognized startup by DIPP, Govt. of India and proudly supports the Startup India movement.
In this series, Uganda’s High Commissioner to India, Grace Akello, has pledged to support Muni University by linking it to higher institutions of learning in India and other parts of the world for benchmarking and collaboration on joint projects. Akello was on Wednesday speaking at the signing of a two-year memorandum of understanding between Lemon School of Entrepreneurship in India and Muni University, at the university main campus in Arua, an arrangement which the commissioner herself connected. Areas of collaboration include
- Conducting training programmes in entrepreneurship development for students
- Conducting faculty development programmes in entrepreneurship for lecturers
- Conducting entrepreneurship orientation assessment for the Students and handholding support for setting up
- Management of incubator among others
The High Commissioner said she wanted to support the West Nile region through Muni University because the region has been lagging behind in development from colonial times until the ruling National Resistance Movement came to power. ‘West Nile was left at the back of this country from the 1900s until the start of the NRM government. For a long, West Nile was the reserve for Ugandan labour, as workers in tea plantations and workers in sugar plantations, provision of private security. I want to help bring the minds, brains and thoughts of the West The nile to power Uganda’s development. That’s why I want to support Muni University,’ Akello said. She said she supports the West Nile region because it is a strategic location as a business hub for four countries in the neighbourhood, namely, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, Kenya, and the Central African Republic. She also gifted the University with 19 copies of three of her books she has authored, namely: Women in Diplomacy; Thoughts of an African Ambassador, My Barren Song and It is also Thought Patterns in Tales. The Vice-Chancellor of Muni University, Prof. Christine Dranzoa, thanked the ambassador for presenting an opportunity for the University to collaborate with other institutions, saying networking is a critical factor in the development of the country. ‘Our prayer is that you continue linking and networking with partners including refugee-support because West Nile hosts more refugees than any region in the country,’ she said. The Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Associate Prof. Simon Anguma, said: ‘Through the collaborative programmes, we are going to develop the human resource that is critically needed for industrialization.’ He prayed that such collaborations continue even after the two years. Professor Robert Kojobe also joined the conversation and told the importance of engineering in the development of any nation. He is proud of his work that he is building engineers. He also told about the importance of staff exchange. If someone from Uganda goes and works with the Indian eco-system then it will be very productive for both of the countries. Professor Openjuru George and Professor David Owiny shared the conversation and prayed for the success of this venture with Muni University.
By
Vaibhav Singh
Hindu College. University of Delhi
New Delhi – 110007
Phone. +91-9455599489
