Axis Bank offers Rs 10-lakh seed funding to IIFT students

MUMBAI: Axis Bank, India's third largest private sector lender, has provided seed funding of Rs 10 lakh to the students of Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, the winners of the inter-campus online gamified competition 'Axis Moves' it has launched in leading B-schools in a bid to bolster entrepreneurship across the country. The winning ideas will be executed by the Axis Bank Foundation and a partner non-governmental organisation.

"This initiative is about how we leverage bright minds to come up with ideas that we are going to implement," Axis Bank CEO Shikha Sharma told ET. "We are seeing how we can use the organisational muscle of Axis to be able to implement some of those ideas," she said.

The competition conducted in 16 campuses across the country saw participation from more than 2,352 students.

As part of the competition students were asked to develop ideas around smart cities and the bank will now develop an app catering to urban mobility, tele education and water management by bringing various stakeholders in these areas on a single platform.

"We took the smart cities ideas this year as this is one of the big macro themes the government is focused on. If we want urbanisation to happen in a disciplined fashion then we might as well build the right infrastructure," Sharma said. Rajesh Dahiya, group executive of Axis Bank said that Rs 10 lakh will be provided as seed money to develop the app and the bank's foundation will choose NGO partners interested in working in such areas.

Axis Bank