Stanford Graduate School of Business returns to Bangalore with Stanford Ignite, the 11-week certificate program for innovators and entrepreneurial thinkers. Prospective applicants for the 08 January – 20 March 2016 program may apply online by 29 September 2015.
Designed to deliver the same highly personal and immersive instruction that executives and students at Stanford experience, Stanford Ignite-Bangalore is aimed at technical professionals, innovators, and entrepreneurs with no previous graduate management education; it is also appropriate for non-business graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, engineers, and scientists.
“Stanford Ignite is intended to help innovators move their ideas and discoveries into the marketplace, whether as entrepreneurs or—in the case of innovators within a large company—as intrapreneurs,” said faculty director James M. Lattin, the Robert A. Magowan Professor of Marketing. “This program gives high-potential individuals the core business skills and experience for translating their ideas into impactful ventures.”
Up to 60 high-potential individuals will be admitted into the program.
Meeting at the state-of-the-art Infosys facilities over extended weekends, classes are taught by the same world-class Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty who teach in the MBA program, both on the ground as well as through high-definition educational technology from Silicon Valley. In addition, the program is customized to the Indian context with instruction and mentoring provided by business leaders, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and coaches from throughout the country.
Past participants attest to the impact of the program.
During the course of the 2014 program, Sreepriya Koppula worked on developing technology to retouch and enhance images for online shopping and other ecommerce platforms. “We did a complete analysis of how to validate the venture idea and risk factors, and we did the necessary pivots to mitigate those risks and start a scalable business,” she said. “We have launched a couple of products in the market since then and are fine-tuning them based on close customer feedback.” Now CEO of Turnaround Systems, Koppula adds, “It was a great bonus to find cofounders among teammates in the Ignite program.”
“After the Stanford Ignite program, I cofounded Flavour Labs, a boutique food and beverage company that is pioneering the concept of fun dining via food trucks in India,” said Nandita Shetty, formerly a neuroimaging researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who earned her master’s degree in biomedical imaging from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Arlington, Texas. “I was passionate about entrepreneurship and the food and beverage space, but was quite alien to this. The Stanford Ignite program helped me understand key aspects of these fields and prepared me for launching a business and gave me enough exposure to understand core aspects of a startup.” Shetty started operations last October.
In aggregate, Stanford Ignite participants have started over 100 successful companies since the program was first introduced at Stanford in 2006.
The first international offering outside Silicon Valley, Stanford Ignite-Bangalore returns to India for the fourth time next year. The program is offered annually in other innovation hubs around the world including Beijing, China; Santiago, Chile; and New York City. It will be offered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and London, England, in September 2015. It is also offered at Stanford in winter and summer.
Financial Support
Accepted applicants will be eligible to apply for a 50% scholarship. The scholarships will be awarded to up to four exceptional self-sponsored participants. Applicants must first be accepted into the program before applying for the fellowship. Tuition fee of US$8,500 includes course materials, program events, and lunch and dinner for evening and Saturday sessions.
