Awantipora, Nov 28: With an aim to encourage its students for becoming employers, Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) launched student-founded perfumes under the brand name ‘Sehr’ on Tuesday here.
The perfumes have been manufactured by the students of Department of Chemistry, IUST, under the project, ‘Extraction of Essential Oils from Wild Aromatic Plants’.
In a statement issued here, IUST spokesperson said: “The exhibition of the perfume range was inaugurated by Prof Mushtaq A Siddiqi, Vice-Chancellor, IUST, inside the campus. This is the first start up of Chemistry department, for which the funds of Rs four lakh were provided by Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC), IUST.”
While speaking on the occasion, Prof Siddiqi lauded the department of Chemistry for taking up this initiative, “which shall help change the mindset of people from seeking to become an employee to become an employer.”
“When an academic entity moves to business, it should be guided by more experienced people so as to set an example for aspiring entrepreneurs as well as earn profits,” he said.
Advising the students, Prof Siddiqi said that employment is generated more through manufacturing rather than trade. “Budding entrepreneurs should focus on manufacturing, which would ultimately tackle the problem of unemployment in Kashmir.”
He added that in addition to research and knowledge dissemination, university has a role to play in entrepreneurship and innovation, for which there is EDC, MHRD project and Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP).
“These programmes have created an eco-system in the university, which would shape the young minds towards entrepreneurship in addition to the studies,” he said.
Project head and Assistant Professor, Dr Manzoor Ahmad Rather, said the idea behind the project was to come up with products that would be affordable to all.
“Thus we manufactured the perfumes, for which raw material was extracted from wild plants. Then we did some value additions as well,” he said, adding that perfumes with lavender oil are anti-stress, “which has been scientifically proven.”
Chairperson EDC, Dr Parvaiz Ahmad Mir, said the next step would now be incubation, which would help the products to launch successfully in the commercial market.
He added that over the past month, five entrepreneurship awareness camps have been held in engineering departments of the varsity “so as to sensitize the students about entrepreneurship.”
Among others present at the exhibition were Dean, Academic Affairs, Prof A M Shah, Registrar IUST, Syed Riyaz Ruffai, and faculty members and students of IUST.
