pune savitribai phule pune university is eighth among all the state universities while the college of engineering pune coep has retained its top spot among government technical colleges in the country in the ministry of educations atal ranking of institutions on innovation achievements the ministrys innovation cell started the initiative for ranking higher educational institutions and universities in india on indicators related to promotion and support of innovation and entrepreneurship development among students and faculties the rankings announced on wednesday by minister of state for education subhas sarkar also had symbiosis international as the sole entry from maharashtra in the selffinancedprivate university listvicechancellor of sppu nitin karmalkar said the university has taken many steps to promote entrepreneurship among its students and facultywe started sppu research foundation to ensure that we have a dedicated place for promoting research innovation collaboration and researchbased entrepreneurship we have already incubated 40 startups and set up about 400odd incubation centres in affiliated colleges we organise hackathons and other such competitions and students are also provided with mentorship so that they can nurture their ideas he addedkarmalkar said he wanted more collaboration with industries and he was allowing a colocation on the within the sppu campus we already have a centre for industry 40 c4i4 lab on the campus we are in talks with a medical college so that their instrumentation and support centre can be set up here we have another startup in our university which has now set up its unit here we plan to utilise the space we have by allowing industries to come in so that we can provide space and the industry can collaborate with our students and teachers for their projects he addedvidya yeravdekar principal director of symbiosis society said that they have a symbiosis centre for innovation and entrepreneurship that turn into startups we also have an mba in innovation and entrepreneurship where students create their own companies there has always been a focus on innovation we have incubated 30 startups in our incubator on campus we also have funding from dst she added coep director bb ahuja said that the institute has retained its position because of the various startup friendly decisions made by the collegewe have an entrepreneurship cell that guides students in how to develop an idea into a viable business model then we have bhau institute which is a startup incubator and helps students understand everything from registering a startup to understanding various taxations we also have a startup fest every year for students to present their business ideas to jury members internally we have rs 50 lakh seed money allocated for chosen ideas apart from all the mentorship the student receives from alumni ahuja saidfrom this year coep also plans to counsel parents the ecosystem is ripe for entrepreneurs and we need to encourage them parents play a huge role in such decisions and hence we are planning to counsel them to encourage their wards to choose entrepreneurship if they have viable ideas we