MUMBAI, INDIA: Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), a newly formed non-profit organization in India is hoping to register about 500 universities & colleges across the country by 2012-13. In the process, the global NGO hopes to bring out many more outstanding leaders and entrepreneurs in line with India’s former president Abdul Kalam’s 2020 vision.

The global NGO is literally changing the world through highly dedicated students teams from more than 15,000 universities in more than 40 countries. Started in India in 2003, the organization has got the involvement of about 20 Indian corporates including Syntel Inc, Reliance Money, KPMG India, PWC India, HSBC India, Eastman Chemicals among others. In fact, SIFE in India is promoted by a global IT and KPO organization – Syntel.

Talking to CIOL, Keshav R. Murugesh, president & COO of Syntel Ltd said, “SIFE is a movement to develop the youth of India and the society at large. Over the last four years, the NGO has spread its wings across the south, west and north and now expanding across other regions. We are presently looking at quality of the projects the college groups bring out that will sustain over a long term rather than quantity.”

For example Welingkar College in Mumbai took part in an initiative at Nastik Central Jail, where in they trained the prisoners to create and develop handicrafts and then automated the retail process by introducing computers. “In the process the prisoners developed skills that will sustain them even after they leave the prison,” says Murugesh.

Likewise Syntel in association with Vidhya came out with a scheme where in the old computers were updated to newer faster systems and taken to Vidhya centers to impart IT education to slum dwellers in Powai (Mumbai). “They were taught the basics of computers thus open the minds of the slum dwellers to new avenues,” says Murugesh.

Sudip Bandyopadhyay, director & CEO of Reliance Money Limited (ADAG) says, “SIFE is a great initiative for students to focus on business projects to help the society. Reliance Money is proudly associated with SIFE as it has an objective to help the society and the people around them. In fact, it is different from other NGOs since it sustains projects for a long time to come.”

Over the last four years, the organization has about 40 colleges registered and implemented about 3-4 projects each thus the total has run into 150-200 projects on a sustainable basis so far.

Over the last few months, the 40 odd colleges in India took part at the regional level competition that has been short listed to 8 teams. The teams make their presentations at the finals at the Grand Hyatt Mumbai hotel on June 20, 2008. 

Due to the rapid growth of SIFE teams around the world, a new format for competition was introduced. Each SIFE country held a national competition, and each country’s national champion team advanced to the SIFE World Cup.  This year the International Competition is likely to be held in Singapore on October 1-3.