Nasmina Nasar
I am writing to introduce you to the world’s largest train event to promote entrepreneurship – Jagriti Yatra.
Jagriti Yatra inspires and supports entrepreneurship among the youth of small towns and villages of India. It is a 15 days, 8000 km national train journey which takes selected entrepreneurial youth to meet the role model entrepreneurs (social and business) who are developing unique solutions to India’s developmental challenges. Jagriti Yatra attracts 17,000 registrations every year through India and some parts of the world of which only 500 best are selected for the journey.
Jagriti Yatra with the support from leading corporates, has been executed successfully for last 9 consecutive years, and has impacted the lives of more than 4200 youth. Over 1000 of them have started their own enterprises. This unique Indian experiment is gaining global footprints by being replicated all over the world by Jagriti alumni. The Millennial Train Journey in the USA and Ticket-for-Change in France are organized by Jagriti alumnus.
The train stops at 12 locations to personally meet exceptional change-makers who are transforming India. Aravind Eye Care (Madurai), Anshu Gupta (Goonj, Delhi), Bunker Roy (Barefoot College, Tiloniya), Joe Madiath (Gram Vikas, Odisha), , are a few among others. Nation-builders such as Sam Pitroda, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, Meera Sanyal, and Dr.R. A. Mashelkar have participated in the program previously.
Recently Jagriti Yatra, with support from Coca-Cola India, organised another program called Sustainable Enterprise Award India 2017, to help district entrepreneurs, working in the areas of Water, Agriculture and Recycling across India, out of which over 300+ enterprises from remote areas of India, participated. The top 3 teams were awarded with seed money worth 3.5 lacs, to support their enterprises.
With the extensive network of alumni and supporters on its side, Jagriti ventured into creating a district-level enterprise incubation program, Jagriti Enterprise Centre – Purvanchal (JEC-P), in one of the most underdeveloped regions of the country, eastern Uttar Pradesh in 2015 through which 500 local jobs have been generated and 2 million rural women have been impacted through a digital literacy program across 9000 villages of eastern Uttar Pradesh. But Jagriti’s ambitions don’t stop here. If the last 10 years were about building this huge network of entrepreneurs, the next 10 years focus building the enterprise ecosystem in Tier 2 & Tier 3 districts of India to support these entrepreneurs.
Nasmina Nasar , a graduate student turned social activist have been selected from Kozhikode for the 10th edition of Jagriti Yatra, a journey of transformation that is going to take place from 24th December 2017 to 8th January 2018.
