The University has officially opened the Mitali and Divyendu Kumar ASPIRE start-up centre, designed to help students develop and grow their own business ideas.<\/p>\n
The centre, based on the first floor of Sibson, the new home of Kent Business School, was opened by the University\u2019s Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Karen Cox on Tuesday 23 January at an event attended by both Mitali and Divyendu Kumar, who made a generous donation for its establishment.<\/p>\n
ASPIRE, which stands for Accelerator Space for Innovation and Responsible Enterprise<\/a>, is designed to help students from across the University of Kent to create new start-ups and responsible enterprises by learning the necessary entrepreneurial skills to help grow a business from the ground-up.<\/p>\n As part of this it is the home of the Business Start-Up Journey<\/a>, a 12-week programme run by KBS and available to students from the School of Computing and the School of Economics, that is designed to help students create and run successful businesses.<\/p>\n ASPIRE also funds a dedicated project officer, Rebecca Smith<\/a>, to provide support to students running their businesses and an in-house \u2018Entrepreneurs in Residence\u2019, Adam Smith<\/a>\u00a0and Jason Marshall<\/a> who run a series of events, workshops and activities to help students on the BSUJ and other ASPIRE events.<\/p>\n Divyendu Kumar, who sits on the KBS International Advisory Board, is the Managing Director of a large automotive retailing Group with multi-country, multi-brand operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"