Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDII), an autonomous and not-for-profit institute, set up in 1983, is sponsored by apex financial institutions - the IDBI Bank Ltd., IFCI Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd. and the State Bank of India (SBI). The Government of Gujarat pledged 23 acres of land on which stands the majestic and sprawling EDII campus.

To pursue its mission, EDII has helped set up 12 state-level exclusive Entrepreneurship Development Centres and Institutes. One of the satisfying achievements, however, was taking entrepreneurship to a large number of schools, colleges, science and technology institutions and management schools in several states by including entrepreneurship inputs in their curricula. In view of EDII’s expertise in entrepreneurship, the University Grants Commission had also assigned EDII the task of developing curriculum on entrepreneurship and the Gujarat Textbook Board assigned to it the task of developing textbooks on entrepreneurship for 11th and 12th standards.

In order to broaden the frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research, EDII has established a Centre for Research in Entrepreneurship Education and Development (CREED), to investigate into a range of issues surrounding small and medium enterprise sector, and establish a network of researchers and trainers by conducting a biennial seminar on entrepreneurship education and research.

In the international arena, efforts to develop entrepreneurship by way of sharing resources and organising training programmes, have helped EDII earn accolades and support from the World Bank, Commonwealth Secretariat, UNIDO, ILO, FNSt, British Council, Ford Foundation, European Union, ASEAN Secretariat and several other renowned agencies.

The Ministry of External Affairs, Govt. of India assigned to EDII the task of setting up Entrepreneurship Development Centers in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam and Uzbekistan. Five such centres in African region will be established very soon.