Monitor News Bureau
Awantipora, Nov 28: The Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) on Wednesday launched indigenous brand of perfumes under the name ‘Sehr’.
The perfumes have been manufactured by the students of Department of Chemistry, IUST, under the project, ‘Extraction of Essential Oils from Wild Aromatic Plants.
Vice-Chancellor, IUST, Prof Mushtaq A Siddiqi inaugurated the exhibition of the perfume range inside the campus.
This is the first start-up of Chemistry department, for which the funds of Rs four lakh were provided by Entrepreneurship Development Cell (EDC), IUST.
While speaking on the occasion, Prof Siddiqi lauded the department of Chemistry for taking up the initiative which shall help to change the mindset of people from looking for employment to becoming an employer themselves.”
Advising the students, Prof Siddiqi said, manufacturing is the best way to generate employment. The professor said therefore, it is best that budding entrepreneurs would focus on manufacturing as it would ultimately tackle the problem of unemployment in Kashmir.”
He added that in addition to research and knowledge dissemination, university has a role in entrepreneurship and innovation, for which there is EDC, MHRD project and Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP). “These programmes have created an eco-system in the university, which would shape the young minds towards entrepreneurship in addition to the studies,” he said.
Project head and Assistant Professor, Dr Manzoor Ahmad Rather, said the idea behind the project was to come up with products that would be affordable to all. “The raw material for the perfume was extracted from wild plants. Then the research team did some value additions,” he said, adding that perfumes with lavender oil are anti-stress.
Chairperson EDC, Dr Parvaiz Ahmad Mir said the next step would now be incubation, which would help the products to launch successfully in the commercial market.
He added that over the past month, five entrepreneurship awareness camps have been held in engineering departments of the varsity so as to sensitize the students about entrepreneurship.
Dean, Academic Affairs, Prof A M Shah, Registrar IUST, Syed Riyaz Ruffai, and faculty members and students of IUST were present on the occasion.
