TEZPUR, March 11 - The Department of Business Administration of Tezpur University (TU) kicked off Sampark 2018, the annual industry-academia summit yesterday with a presentation of �Business-Idea Challenge� lectures by noted guests, and varied sessions on industry talks by business heads.
This is the 18th edition of Sampark and the theme of the event for 2018 is �Bridging the Skill Divide�.
Ashok Dutta, Chief General Manager of Oil India Ltd (Duliajan) attended the inaugural session as the chief guest. Rajkumar More, Director of FINER, Dr Shalini Lal, Founder of Infinity OD, Satyarth Priyedarshi, Head of Product Marketing, JioChat, Piyush Bhartiya, Co-Founder of Admitkard and LifePad were the other notable guests present on the occasion.
Speaking on the occasion, Ashok Dutta said that OIL is a partner in the Government of India�s skill development programme and they are focused on the area of skill upgradation to international standards through significant industry-academia involvement.
He also mentioned that countries like South Korea has skilled workforce of over 96% and all the developed countries have more than 60% skilled workforce. But when it comes to India, skilled workforce is only 2.3%, which reflects that there is a huge gap between industry requirement and output.
He further added that the gap needs to be bridged as India has the opportunity of demographic dividend and thus emphasised the role of more industry-academia collaborations.
Addressing the gathering, FINER Director Rajkumar More said that the North East has immense business opportunities, which needs to be taken advantage of.
He cited the example of his own organisation FINER, which has grown very fast in the region. �Even a country like Germany has sought favours from a company like FINER, based in Assam�, he said. He mentioned that FINER and TU signed an MoUwhich he hoped will create newer opportunities not only for TU, but will also benefit FINER.
Various informative sessions/panel discussions such as Skill-Based Economy and Start-up Economy to Leveraging Technology in meeting the Skill Gap were organised throughout the day. A special session on start-up by FINER was also organised along with a video conferencing session. These sessions were attended by noted entrepreneurs and prominent business heads. Apart from faculty members and administrative staff of the University, students and faculty members from Darrang College also attended various sessions.
