India’s declared “decade of innovation” is fueling change—and steering Beedie business student Fahad Yasin’s future.

Working in Mumbai, Yasin is of 10 SFU students benefitting from the BC-India Exchange and Mobility Initiative created in June. He hopes to play a role in driving the change that will advance India over the next 10 years.

“On a high level, it is widely known that India has a demand for change,” he writes in his blog, www.thedarkhorsejourney.com. “And on a micro level, I have experienced personally the inefficiencies faced here—the power outages, unsanitary water, congested transportation and so much more.”

Yasin met in November with SFU President Andrew Petter and Beedie Business School Dean Danny Shapiro during their visit to India. He is working as a business development analyst with the Canada-India Business Council via the Surrey Board of Trade. He’s investigating joint-venture opportunities between BC- and Mumbai-area clean-energy companies, and working with SFU student Dulce Nunez to identify and match organizations with mutual interests.

Other SFU students completing work terms in India under the Western Economic Diversification Canada-funded initiative:

• Business students Cho Wang and Vijay Raju are investigating joint-venture opportunities for BC video-game companies in the New Delhi region’s cell-phone gaming market.
• SFU grad Bernard Ho and mechatronics student Nadar Moradi are working with Luminous Power Technologies Ltd., SFU and a Surrey company on potential research and development (R&D) partnerships to develop emerging-market clean-energy solutions.
• Mechatronics students Daniel Zwart and Sumangal Malhotra will work with Punjab coach-maker Sutlej Motors on a potential R&D partnership with SFU to develop fuel-cell technologies for buses.
• Engineering-science grad student Sumanpreet Chhina is collaborating with colleagues at New Delhi’s Shobhit University on research involving an SFU-developed biomedical device that quickly and accurately detects, diagnoses and treats infectious diseases in Indian infants.