PM SHRI Regional Mentoring Session at Parul University – AICTE, MoE Innovation Cell, Wadhwani Foundation, and PIERC laid out a 3-Day Innovation Programme for India’s Lakshya 2047’s Vision of Viksit Bharat!

The Government of India’s Lakshya 2047 vision of Viksit Bharat needs a pipeline. The Three-Day Regional Mentoring Session at Parul University is what that pipeline looks like when it begins in school classrooms.

This exclusive programme was operated under the authority of the Ministry of Education’s Innovation Cell, the AICTE – All India Council for Technical Education, Wadhwani Foundation, NCERT, and the Department of School Education & Literacy. PIERC plays an important role as the nodal centre. Subsequently, 120 students & teachers from PM SHRI schools, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya and Kendriya Vidyalayas across the entire Gujarat were present and participated equally!

PIERC – 240+ Startups, 1400 Jobs, One National Vision!

The programme was structured across three intensive days. Here’s the end-to-end sequence –

• 28th to 30th April 2026
• Hospital auditorium, Parul University Campus, Vadodara, Gujarat
• Parul Institute of Engineering & Technology was the nodal centre via PIERC.
• Authorities – Ministry of Education Innovation Cell, AICTE, Wadhwani Foundation, NCERT, DoSEL.
• Approx 3.75 Crores of funding for SIC programme.
• 66 students & 66 teachers from PM SHRI Schools, Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, Kendriya Vidyalayas across Gujarat.
• Experts from Wadhwani Foundation – Dr Arvind Desmukh & Ms Anbumathi M.

The Government of India’s Lakshya 2047 vision of the Viksit Bharat framework commits the country to becoming a Viksit Bharat, a developed nation, by 2047, the centenary of independence. The framework rests on multiple pillars, including economic transformation, manufacturing leadership through Make in India, innovation and research, education and skilling, and demographic dividend conversion. The PM SHRI Regional Mentoring Session intersects directly with several of these pillars. Parul University’s earlier engagement with the Lakshya 2047 vision of the Viksit Bharat framework, inaugurated by Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh, established the institutional commitment that the April 2026 programme operationalised at the school level.

The school students participating in the April 2026 programme are between approximately 14 and 18 years of age. By 2047, they will be in the 35-to-39 age band, the exact generation that will hold leadership and operational responsibility for Viksit Bharat. Building innovation and entrepreneurial capability in this cohort today is not a peripheral activity. It is the structural human-capital investment that the Lakshya 2047 vision of Viksit Bharat requires.

Several specific government initiatives converge in the PM SHRI RMS programme.

• PM SHRI Schools (PM Schools for Rising India): Flagship Ministry of Education scheme selecting schools that exemplify the National Education Policy 2020 in implementation.
• National Education Policy (NEP) 2020: Foundational policy framework integrating design thinking, entrepreneurship, and innovation into school education.
• School Innovation Council (SIC): Structured national programme operating under the MoE Innovation Cell with AICTE collaboration.
• Startup India: Government framework for entrepreneurship support that the SIC programme connects schools into.
• Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make in India: Self-reliance and manufacturing leadership initiatives that the student innovations directly contribute to.
• Samagra Shiksha: State-level integrated education scheme administered by Ms. Shilpa Patel as Secretary at the Gujarat State Project Office.
• Department of School Education and Literacy (DoSEL): MoE department coordinating the innovation initiatives that the programme implemented.

The programme opened on 28 April 2026 with the State Inauguration Ceremony at the Hospital Auditorium.

The lamp lighting ceremony was conducted with Shri Mukesh Kumar (Additional State Project Director, State Project Office), Shri Pradeep Dhage (Assistant Innovation Director, MoE Innovation Cell), and Ramesh Sir (dedicated Lecturer at the District Institute of Education and Training, Vadodara). Dr. Kunjal Sinha, Pro Vice Chancellor at Parul University, and Dr. Swapnil, Dean of the Parul Institute of Engineering and Technology, felicitated the guests. Mr. Jay Sudani, CEO of PIERC, delivered the institutional vote of thanks. The morning Design Thinking Foundations session and afternoon Fine-Tuning the Problem Statement workshop were led by Dr Arvind Deshmukh and Ms Anbumathi M of the Wadhwani Foundation, who anchored the intellectual content across all three days. The day concluded with Ms. Anbumathi’s session on the Innovation Initiatives of DoSEL.

29 April 2026. Day 2 started not with a new topic but with a pause. A reflection and alignment session first, before anything else, which set a different tone for what followed.

The morning belonged to Mr. Mithilesh Patel of Vraj Innovator. The Build-Learn-Measure: Prototyping in Action workshop came first, then the Many Ideas, One Solution framework, which is exactly what it sounds like: taking the pile of ideas that any group of students generates and developing the discipline to filter down to what is actually worth building. Mr. Patel’s session covered the full arc of idea-to-startup translation without skipping the parts that usually get skipped in school settings. Problem identification, solution design, material feasibility, prototype development, market strategy, team building, and intellectual property protection through patents, copyrights, and trademarks. All of it, in sequence, with students who were here to build something rather than just learn about building something.

The afternoon shifted completely. Mr Parth Devariya, AI and Technology Consultant at GFuture Tech Pvt Ltd, ran the AI for School Innovation session, and the pace of it was different from anything earlier in the day. Working applications were built in minutes using Google Labs Opal. Vehicle telematics dashboards were constructed through Claude AI, live, in front of students who had possibly never watched software come together that quickly. India’s AI data sovereignty challenges came into the conversation too, which grounded the session in something larger than the tools themselves. The day ended at the PIERC’s Incubation Centre and Centre of Excellence on the Parul University campus. Not a presentation about incubation. An actual visit inside it.

Day 3 on 30 April 2026 brought the programme to its evaluative climax. The morning Pitch Clinic prepared student teams for their afternoon presentations. From 2:00 PM onwards, 50 student innovation pitches were presented before a 20-member jury panel comprising Dr. Arvind Deshmukh, Ms. Anbumathi M, Mr. Parth Devariya, Mr. Hardik Kharva (Centre Head, VSS, PIERC), Ms. Sonal Sudani (Incubation Manager, PIERC), and Mr. Umang Panchal (Assistant Professor, PIET) and Mr. Anup Chaudhary (Incubation Manager), Mr. Umang Panchal, Mrs. Sonal Sudani (PIERC), Mr. Hardik Kharwa, Ms. Sujaya Bhattacharjee, Mr. Himansu Das, Ms. Vanshika Muchhara, Dr. Partkumar Sapariya, Dr. Bhavin Dhanavade, Dr. Prashant Khanna, Dr. Sneha Soni, Dr. Saurabh Parmar, Ms. Kajol Patel, Mr. Vivek Joshi, Ms. Riddhi Mehta, and Mr. Omkamal Vashi.

The broader evaluation infrastructure operated through ten three-member panels per AICTE programme guidelines. The Valedictory Ceremony brought together the dignitaries who had carried the programme across institutional levels.

Ms. Shilpa Patel, Secretary at the State Project Office of Samagra Shiksha in Gandhinagar, travelled from the state capital to attend. Shri Kishorebhai Shetaria attended from Dwarka. Shri Aseem Kalta represented AICTE on stage alongside Dr. Arvind Deshmukh and Ms. Anbumathi M from the Wadhwani Foundation. Mr. Jay Sudani, CEO of PIERC, delivered the formal Vote of Thanks. The student anchor, Anvika, handled both the inaugural and valedictory ceremonies.

Entrepreneurship is the Agni Path. But when we cross the Agni Path, we get the true path.Dr. Arvind Deshmukh, Master Trainer at the Wadhwani Foundation, at the valedictory address

The Parul Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Centre at Parul University served as the operational backbone of the programme. The Centre’s institutional record provides the credibility framework within which the visiting school students and teachers were able to see professional innovation infrastructure in operation. The PIERC ecosystem statistics, as referenced during the inaugural ceremony, include:

• Over 240 startups incubated through PIERC’s incubation and pre-incubation programmes
• More than 1,400 jobs generated by PIERC-incubated ventures
• Over Rs. 40 crore in annual revenue generated by PIERC-incubated startups
• 51.5 lakh in funding received by PU’s women-led startups from the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises
• Recipient of the Best Mentoring Institution Award from the AICTE Innovation Cell
• Startup studios operating across Vadodara, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Rajkot

The PM SHRI Regional Mentoring Session at Parul University operationalised, in a single three-day programme, the convergence of multiple national initiatives:

• Vertical convergence: From the Government of India’s Lakshya 2047 vision of Viksit Bharat strategic vision down to a Class 9 student in JNV Mahisagar building a sensor-and-fan helmet visor.
• Horizontal convergence: Across the MoE Innovation Cell, AICTE, NCERT, DoSEL, Samagra Shiksha (state), the Wadhwani Foundation (private), and Parul University (academic).
• Outcome convergence: Eleven school-student innovations, six of which directly addressed Atmanirbhar Bharat priorities including agricultural resilience, road safety, sustainable infrastructure, and clean energy.