Ketan Deshpande, a third year student of engineering at a city college, has become the youngest in India to bag the Paragon Fellowship awarded by the Hong Kong-based Foundation for Youth Social Entrepreneurship (FYSE) this year. Ketan got the award for starting a voluntary organisation – Friends’ Union for Energising Lives (FUEL).

FUEL works towards creating awareness of entrance tests and centralised admission procedures to colleges for students of X and XII standard. The organisation, started three years ago, also runs a helpline and conducts workshops giving details of the exam dates, tips on filling forms, preparing for the tests and so on.

The Paragon Fellowship allots mentors -successful entrepreneurs who have made it big from scratch -to the fellowship awardees. These mentors not only open up funding opportunities, but also help students submit a business plan to be presented in the Asia-level conference of entrepreneurs to be held in June 2010 at Hyderabad. “I look at it as an opportunity to expand FUEL and ensure that a larger base of students would benefit by the activity,” Ketan said. He also said that the recognition would help him participate in similar international competitions. A total of 570 entries were received for the fellowship from the Asia pacific region, of which 100 were selected -47 of those from India.

“Many youngsters in Asia Pacific dream of being an entrepreneur, but they hesitate to take action because they don't know any young entrepreneurs who have already succeeded in doing so. The Paragon fellowship aims to change that,” said Andrea Krause, Executive Director, FYSE.

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