Global Indian International School launches entrepreneurship bootcamp

SINGAPORE — Global Indian International School (GIIS), an international school in Singapore, on Monday (April 10) announced the launch of its first entrepreneurship bootcamp, currently open to students aged between 14 and 17.

The bootcamp is an initiative under its Global Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GCIE), which embeds an ongoing entrepreneurship programme for high school students to create a unique and non-traditional learning format. The curriculum was co-developed with professors at INSEAD Business School, China’s Tsinghua University and Canada’s Ivey Business School.

The bootcamp comprises hands-on workshops and takes students on an experiential journey that starts with the creative spark of an idea, through the development of that idea to finally pitching it to real-world investors who may end up investing their capital into the business proposals.

GCIE’s first intensive three-day entrepreneurship bootcamp ended last Sunday with a “pitch day” where students pitched their startup ideas to potential investors for their final presentation. A total of 26 participants from GIIS pitched their proposals to potential investors – Mr Paul Kewene-Hite, Affiliate Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD and Mr Prashant Agarwal, Director, Edge (AIA Group Innovation). The winning team was Soul Tunes, a group of six students whose idea was to connect aspiring musicians to the music industry.

Mr Ash Singh, Adjunct Professor and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the INSEAD Business School’s Singapore campus, said: “Exposure to entrepreneurship, especially at the high school level, is important for equipping our future generation with the confidence and uninhibited creativity that will be necessary to deal with the future.”

Mr Rohit Ambekar, Director Business and Strategy, GlIS, said: “At GIIS, we believe that entrepreneurship and innovation is a critical future skillset. We are dedicated to creating more of these kinds of non-traditional learning models available for our students and help prepare them to become future global leaders and thinkers.”

Founded in 2002, GIIS has more than 15,000 students across 20 campuses in Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, Thailand, UAE, Vietnam and India.