St. Xavier's University, Kolkata has started the Centre for Incubation, Consultancy and Entrepreneurship (CICE) from Jan 2021, to promote Incubation, Consultancy, Entrepreneurship and Management Development Programme (MDP) with innovation and research through industry-academia partnership.

CICE aims to provide students and alumni of the University a unique, exceptional, and application-oriented education that will be a transforming experience intellectually, culturally, socially and personally, with the mandatory view on values, to produce holistic development of persons; excel in all areas of teaching-learning, research, outreach and consultancy, where innovative ideas and solutions can flourish; offer subjects for competence building, and to motivate/animate a work force imbued with human values; promote academic exchange and academia-industry interfacing, making use of the latest technology; contribute to the well-being of the nation without counting the cost, in the spirit of NIHIL ULTRA (Nothing Beyond), the motto of St. Xavier's.

Incubation & Entrepreneurship
The CICE will function with the aim to bring about innovative solutions towards Social and Business challenges, to develop expertise, knowledge and thought leadership for promoting and supporting entrepreneurship development, to provide support to existing companies through collaborative research and development, solution design and strategy formulation. This will convert Innovative ideas into successful ventures, with strong focus on relevant Investment/Funding options.
It shall aim to answer queries related to market needs with tested solutions, launch planning and strategy, optimize combination of marketing channels to tap new target customers, acquire new markets, establish strong revenue models, and plan the steps to achieve milestones. Also, it shall probe whether the entrepreneur is solving a big social challenge through his or her entrepreneurship goal.

The Centre shall initially cater to the present students and alumni of the University who display with high potential for entrepreneurship and incubate the ideas of existing mid-sized entrepreneurs looking for scale up or innovative approach to existing operations, from various parts of the country based on defined selection criteria. The centre will work closely with Academia and Industry experts, big corporate houses, other incubation centres, trade associations and more. The centre will encourage student-orientation towards entrepreneurship as a career option through seminars, workshops and trainings to budding entrepreneurs

Consultancy, MDP and eMDP:
CICE will strongly focus on consultancy projects from corporate houses and other organizations and emphasise on projects that have high applicability. Faculty members with expertise in various domains shall play key roles in driving such projects, with the aim to generate social benefits. CICE shall take up the projects judging the merit, profile of the principal investigator, patent possibilities, location of the project, how the project can serve social needs of that area, relevance of the problem addressed through the project, background of objectives, practical utility including socio-economic implications of the results and the scope for further research.

CICE will strongly promote MDP and eMDP, both classical need based and generated through post-COVID market demand, both short and long duration. MDPs in the domain of Business Analytics, Digital Marketing, Data Science, Machine Learning and more will strongly cater to the post-COVID market needs and contribute towards strategic enrichment.

- Bidisha Roy