Who We Are
The Office of Entrepreneurship Development (OED) is Grameen University’s dedicated platform for turning students into entrepreneurs, innovators, and problem-solvers. Working alongside the university’s academic programs, OED helps students discover their creative capacity, develop an entrepreneurial mindset, identify real-world problems, and transform their ideas into sustainable businesses.
Through structured programming, mentorship, venture support, research, and ecosystem engagement, the Office helps students move from curiosity and creativity to venture creation and social impact.
Our Vision
The Office of Entrepreneurship Development supports Grameen University’s founding vision of creating a world of three zeros — zero net carbon emissions, zero wealth concentration to end poverty, and zero unemployment by unleashing entrepreneurship in all.
Who It’s For
The Office of Entrepreneurship Development is built for Grameen University’s students, undergraduates from every academic discipline, whether or not they’ve ever thought of themselves as entrepreneurs. No prior entrepreneurial experience is required. The Office welcomes students from every discipline and background who are interested in creating solutions to real-world challenges.
A Four-Year Entrepreneurship Development Pathway
The Grameen University experience is not built around a traditional four-year academic plan alone. Running alongside it is a four-year entrepreneurial journey, a mandatory part of every student’s time at the university, from their first year to their last.
Year - 1 Learning to Become an Entrepreneur
The first year is devoted to one purpose: helping students discover entrepreneurs within themselves. Even before formal admission, interested applicants attend introductory sessions on what entrepreneurship really means. Once enrolled, students are placed into small teams with a simple but challenging task. start and run a real business. Not a business plan, but a real venture with real customers and real income; however small it begins. Through the year, students learn marketing, finance, operations, and teamwork not from textbooks, but from direct experience — testing ideas, building prototypes, and learning to negotiate, handle uncertainty, and make decisions in real situations.
Years 2 & 3 - Learning by Doing
As students move deeper into their chosen field of study, their entrepreneurial journey continues alongside it – academic learning and entrepreneurial practice moving together, not separately. Every subject is approached through an entrepreneurial lens: a student of environmental studies learns to turn environmental problems into real solutions; a student of public health learns to design and test community health solutions people actually trust and use. In every discipline, students are asked the same question, how can this knowledge be used to solve real problems and improve lives? This stage is supported through practical workshops, a structured mentorship program connecting students with entrepreneurs and investors, and immersion programs with working enterprises.
Year 4 -Turning Ideas into Reality
In their final year, students bring the entrepreneurial journey together with the completion of their academic degree. Alongside final coursework and examinations, every student undertakes a Capstone Venture Project, either launching a new venture, or working with an existing one to design and implement a new product, service, or expansion. Promising ventures are supported in reaching out to investors for seed funding, with guidance from the university, and students continue to receive close mentorship at every critical step. By graduation, students leave with more than a degree – they leave with real experience, a portfolio built through their own effort, and, in many cases, a working enterprise already creating value and jobs.
PROGRAMS & SERVICES
Entrepreneurship Orientation
Introduces students to entrepreneurship as a pathway for solving social, environmental, and economic challenges while creating meaningful opportunities for themselves and others.
Student Entrepreneurial Diagnostic
Provides students with tools to assess entrepreneurial interests, strengths, leadership potential, and development needs, helping them better understand their entrepreneurial journey.
Innovation Labs
Facilitates problem identification, design thinking, customer discovery, opportunity mapping, and solution development through practical and collaborative learning experiences.
Entrepreneurship Bootcamps
Offers practical training on entrepreneurial mindset, business model development, social business design, customer validation, financial planning, resource mobilisation, digital marketing, technology, AI, and communication skills.
Coaching and Mentoring
Provides continuous guidance from entrepreneurs, practitioners, sector experts, and mentors who support students throughout their venture-building journey.
Entrepreneurial Immersion
Connects students with startups, social businesses, companies, and value-chain actors through exposure visits and experiential learning opportunities.
Venture Progress Assessment
Offers structured developmental reviews that help students reflect on progress, receive feedback, and strengthen the growth and impact of their ventures.
Coworking and Venture Support
Provides dedicated spaces and resources for collaboration, prototyping, mentoring, networking, and venture development.
Why It Matters
Grameen University believes that every individual possesses the potential to create, innovate, and solve problems. The Office of Entrepreneurship Development exists to help students unlock that potential through a structured journey of learning, experimentation, and venture creation.
Rather than preparing students solely for employment, OED equips them with the mindset, skills, and experience to become creators of opportunities. Through real-world projects, mentorship, and venture-building support, students graduate prepared to launch enterprises, drive innovation, and contribute to a more inclusive, sustainable, and entrepreneurial future.
Get Involved.
Students interested in joining the Student Entrepreneurship Development Pathway or participating in entrepreneurship activities can contact the Office of Entrepreneurship Development for information on upcoming cohorts, events, competitions, mentorship opportunities, and ecosystem engagement initiatives.
Mentors, investors, and organizations interested in supporting student ventures, and researchers or institutions interested in collaborating with the Entrepreneurship Research Cell, can reach the Office directly.