MIT AITI program in SJMSOM, IIT Bombay

Heard of an app that gives real time update on the air pollution around you, so that you are socially aware and can cause less damage to the earth? Heard of controlling an aircraft to deliver food supplies to the poverty-stricken places of the country with a mobile app? Heard about Doctors monitoring patients’ improvement and medication with an app? Expect all this and with much more scope for innovation, inculcating leadership and paving the way to break the monotonous syndrome of corporate drudgery and breathe the freshness of entrepreneurship!

IIT Bombay and SJMSOM are pleased to host and launch MIT Accelerated Information Technology Initiative (AITI) for the first time in India at IIT Bombay between 2^nd July and 10^th August 2012. This marks the India launch of the globally renowned mobile technology startup incubator by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Boston, and will be offered to about 40 under-graduate and Management students at IIT Bombay who aspire to be entrepreneurs.

SJMSOM, IIT Bombay carries entrepreneurship as one of the three pillars along with leadership and innovation. Apart from the regular courses and activities on entrepreneurship, through MIT’s AITI, SJMSOM offers its students a unique platform to gain exposure, experiment and then excel. SJMSOM's close association with SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), IIT Bombay, will take the experience to greater levels of entrepreneurship nirvana.

MIT AITI is a multidisciplinary group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI) that promotes development in emerging regions by cultivating young technology entrepreneurs. The program has so far been launched in more than 5 countries to enable technology-based innovation and entrepreneurship in leading universities. The program is being introduced in India for the first time at IIT Bombay. AITI, with support from Google, organizes mobile technologies and entrepreneurship courses at universities, instructed by MIT instructors. The objective of the program is to enable aspiring entrepreneurs to successfully launch startup ventures. The program further seeks to build networks of local individuals that will stimulate student innovation including mentors, seed funders, and technology leaders and has had a very successful track record of programs in East Africa.

AITI program develops curriculum materials, software technologies, platforms, and networks that enable students in emerging regions to innovate in the area of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The course focus is on mobile and Internet technologies, and is structured so that the students are awakened to the commercial possibilities of the technologies. Components of the course include detailed technical curriculum, funded business competitions, guest lectures, and networking events, all to help our students develop and realize their ideas. Furthermore, the program will create online course material repository so that students across the globe can benefit out of it.

The AITI program at IIT Bombay is a 6-week intensive workshop with a software development component and an entrepreneurship component. The software development component focuses on design, implementation, and deployment of mobile services and applications: SMS, USSD, Android, and mobile web. The entrepreneurship component focuses on idea generation, case students, market analysis, marketing, pitches, public speaking/presentations, funding, and networking. The workshop will be instructed by a team of 2 MIT instructors, a Sloan MBA and an instructor who has a Masters in Computer Science from MIT, assisted by 2 MIT undergraduate teaching assistants.

Since 2000, AITI has sent nearly 120 MIT instructors to teach over 1500 students in five countries, resulting in the creation of businesses and the addition of course offerings at their partner universities. This is a wonderful opportunity for students of IIT Bombay and SJMSOM to stimulate and enhance their entrepreneurial instincts by benefitting from the expertise of AITI Program experience.

(Reference: Inputs from MIT AITI Team and aiti.mit.edu )

Saptarishi Saha 
Tippu S
Class of 2013
SJMSOM, IIT Bombay