The Erasmus+ CBHE-funded Co-LIFE project carried out its second pilot of the newly designed 6 ECTS study module Impact-Focused Entrepreneurship (IFE) in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, from 25 January to 1 February 2026, hosted at Arch College of Design & Business.
Photo by Sagar Soneji / Pexels
The Co-LIFE project aims to advance Impact-Focused Entrepreneurship (IFE) education in Indian Higher Education institutions (HEI) through collaboration with European partner universities, emphasizing sustainability, social inclusion, and co-creation—core objectives documented extensively in the project’s benchmarking report and pedagogical framework (Co-LIFE Benchmarking Report 2025; see Samridhi, Yadar 2025).
A multicultural group of 32 students from India, Belgium, Denmark and Finland participated in the nine-week IFE MOOC, culminating in New Delhi. From Laurea, the Jaipur contact week was facilitated by Principal Lecturer Taina Vuorela and Senior Lecturer Tiina Lehtosaari, accompanied by two Laurea Master’s students. This aligns with Co-LIFE’s emphasis on intercultural collaboration and student involvement as co-creators of learning materials and practices, as described in Laurea’s benchmarking documentation (Co-LIFE Benchmarking Report 2025).
The five-day Pilot 2 programme included lectures on intercultural communication, teamwork and design thinking. The integration of design thinking into entrepreneurship education corresponds with broader research on innovation ecosystems in Indian higher education, which highlights human-centered, iterative methods as catalysts for creativity, entrepreneurship, and societal impact. Students also received an overview of the Indian socio-economic and cultural context to support their case assignments.
During the week, students visited several companies in Jaipur – Jaipur Bloc, Rangotri, Kalpana Papers, Neerja Pottery, and Jaipur Rugs – to understand their business challenges. Jaipur’s handicraft and textile sectors, long recognized as pillars of local economic and cultural identity, face a combination of market pressures, global competition, and the need for sustainable business innovation. The visits helped students appreciate how traditional craftsmanship and modern business models intersect, especially in areas related to social, environmental, and economic impact measurement (see colifeproject.eu).
The city of Jaipur, known as the Pink City, is a metropolis of over 4.5 million inhabitants, with an economy powered by tourism, handicrafts, textiles, trade, and an increasingly strong IT and outsourcing sector (https://jaipurcities.in/home/). Tourism remains a major economic driver, generating employment and stimulating local industries (ibid.). The blend of heritage-based industries and modern development provides a relevant environment for exploring impact-focused business development during Co-LIFE Pilot 2 (https://lab.fi/en/project/co-designing-learning-impact-focused-entrepreneurship).
At the end of the pilot week, students presented their case scopes, schedules, and intended actions. Their work reflects a core Co-LIFE ambition: enabling students to co-design solutions for societal and environmental challenges through experiential, collaborative, and culturally informed learning (colifeproject.eu). This educational approach aligns with broader efforts within India to strengthen entrepreneurship education and innovation capacity in higher education institutions (Baldev 2025).
The Jaipur Pilot 2 contact week underscored the importance of international cooperation in higher education. India’s national policies increasingly emphasize internationalisation and global partnerships as essential for quality enhancement and knowledge exchange. The Co-LIFE project embodies such aspirations by creating a bridge between Indian and European HEIs, industries, and communities.
The week’s social programme included a visit to Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century UNESCO World Heritage Site. The students’ learning experience was enriched not only by academic sessions and company visits, but also by cultural immersion – an essential component of developing a globally competent, socially conscious entrepreneurs.
Overall, the pilot implementation demonstrated the power of crosscultural, Learning by Developing (LbD ), based learning to foster impact orientation and agency among future entrepreneurs. As emphasized across Co-LIFE project activities, such collaborations harness the strengths of diverse stakeholders to develop sustainable, locally grounded and globally relevant solutions.
Artificial intelligence-based tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot have been utilised in the writing of this blog post to support idea generation and language editing. However, the authors are responsible for the content and its accuracy.
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