chennai 18000 kilometres 15 days and 500 young indians on a train journey across the country to get inspired and do something for the country through enterprise the jagriti yatra a oneofitskind journey by rail takes select youngsters across india with pitstops where they get to interact and learn from social entrepreneurs on its decennial trip this year the yatra offers an indepth look at 65 enterprises across sectors like healthcare knowledge agriculture housing water and tourism even as it promotes entrepreneurship among the youth of small townrural indiafounder shashank tripathi partner with a big 4 consulting firm says the idea is simple give middle india a purpose and help them discover the future of india everyone likes to learn about the heritage and the history of india while crme de la crme of the youth population can take care of itself and is ambitious the lower india is struggling even for basic facilities the middle india is where the future of india is young indians looking for change in their respective districts and towns he saidthe yatris will visit and interact with enterprises and founders who will share their experiencesfor instance one of their pit stops will be at aravind eye hospitals in madurai set up by dr govindappa venkataswamy popularly known as dr v he set up an 11bed hospital years after he was physically affected by rheumatoid arthiritis which has now become one of the largest centres for eye carethey will also visit sri city near chennai sri city is a standing example of an enterprise city with complete infrastructure and support built through a public private partnership said tripathithrough the journey the participants will be divided into groups of ten each assigned with a vertical they are expected to come up with a business idea and selected entrepreneurs will be coached on a one on one basisbesides the exposure to various enterprises and local problems the yatris say their biggest takeaway is the network they build while on the journeyvanita viswanath bengalurubased social entrepreneur and researcher on inclusive entrepreneurship who conducted an impact assessment on the yatra said when they meet and interact with others they realise that they are not outliers and it is fairly common to see people with a social enterprise in mind many of the participants are unhappy with their course or job and several are involved in community work to get a break from the monotonyvishwanath says while an idea gets seeded during the journey many set up enterprises within 3 years25yearold gaurav totla hailing from nagpur has set up buzzinga labs which works in the area of virtual reality education and skill development rajashri sai runs two companies sri sai aerotech with her family which is into iot and connected devices and impactree which works with social enterprises jagriti yatra success lies in deoria uttar pradesh where former yatris have set up half a dozen startups and created 500600 jobs one such entrepreneur is deoria