Aug 01 2014 : The Economic Times (Delhi)
Entrepreneurs go Back to IIM Classrooms
SREERADHA D BASU
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MUMBAI
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As many as 41 students in latest batch at 7 IIMs are in various stages of starting up
In a remarkable display of India's growing fervour for entrepreneur ship, at least 41 students in the new batch at seven IIMs are in various stages of starting up and running new businesses even as they pursue their MBAs, exclusive data collated by ET shows.This means that an unusually high 2% of students in the new batch at these IIMs are already entrepreneurs.
“There has indeed been a spurt this year in the number of such student entrepreneurs at IIMs,“ IIM-Kozhikode Director Debashis Chatterjee said.
These new IIM students have built startups in mobile apps development, horticulture plantations, event management, solar-powered equipment, food-related businesses and coaching schools.
“The number of people in their 20s who are setting up their own ventures is at a new high,“ says Mukul Singhal, principal, SAIF Partners.
Global B-schools are giving a major push to foster entrepreneurship and domestic counterparts are also placing a similar premium on student startups.
“Entrepreneurial students are like allrounders in a cricket team. They are able to fully appreciate and participate in the whole process of creation of value...this is the ultimate goal of managing an enterprise,“ Chatterjee said.
At the Kozhikode B-school alone, around 15 students in the batch that joined in June are entrepreneurs. The batch at IIM-Kozhikode includes, among others, Bullipe Reddy who runs Prestoo, that builds educational games to teach and test high school students' concepts of physics, maths and chemistry; Krishnan Jeesha who provides outof-home advertising solutions to businesses; and Sumit Kumar Shaw, who has set up a coaching institute as well as a tour and travel company.
IIM-Calcutta has seven such student-entrepreneurs in its new batch; IIM-Bangalore has two and IIM-Ahmedabad has another six. Among the newer IIMs, IIM-Raipur has five such students while IIM-Rohtak and IIM-Shillong have three and four, respectively.
For these young entrepreneurs, an MBA comes with several advantages, most importantly , the network these top schools can provide and the opportunity to brush up their knowledge in areas that are lacking. And an IIM tag certainly doesn't hurt for those wanting to raise money for their own ventures.
“All other things being equal, we would prefer someone with a solid educational background.
A qualification from an IIM or an IIT does lend a bit more credibility when talking to a VC (venture capital fund) or an investor,“ says Abhay Pandey , MD, Sequoia Capital India. “Earlier, the entrepreneurial ecosystem was not so vibrant. Now it's great that people are taking a risk to work towards a much larger outcome,“ he adds.
So, if Aditya Pangtey of IIMCalcutta owns a third of Indiebazaar.com, a managed marketplace for Indian independent artists and designers, his peers at the Joka institute in clude Nikesh Vora, who found t ed AlterEgo, an e-comm ven j ture in the personalised gifting domain; and Pranshu Kacholia, a BITS-Pilani grad who cofounded a mobile app development startup called Droid Studios. His Android app saw as many as 30,000 downloads in six months. “I don't have the business or finance knowledge and that's where an MBA comes in. Also, I want to leverage IIM-Calcutta's network in the future,“ says Kacholia At IIM-Ahmedabad, students have co-founded ventures pro t viding software solutions; launched healthcare mobile t apps and app development startups; designed and prototyped a I product that harvests energy t from cooking stoves; and launched ventures aimed at addressing declining analytical abilities among school students.
Over 80% of the ventures promoted by this year's student en i trepreneurs are still operational. Many such students have partners or co-founders who l take on additional responsibilities while they are at school. The remaining 20% of student entrepreneurs, whose ventures closed f down, are keen to start something new again in the future.
“Entrepreneurship flourishes l when failure and experimentation is tolerated by societies. The i Indian society has reached a cer t tain inflection point when a new generation is not afraid of taking chances and experiment t ing,“ feels Prof Chatterjee.
In IIM-Shillong, businesses t run by students include consulting agency Innovative We; Epitome IT Coaching that focuses primarily on IT educa t tion and Xeopia Solutions, also in the same space. At IIM-Rai t pur, Pratik Suting, an aircraft maintenance engineer, ran his transcription company; Rajesh Jangam opened up a school and Satyadeo Thakur started his venture as a web hosting and designing company. In IIM-Rohtak, Pruthvi Ala, along with three friends, started a snacks business serving offices such as Accenture and IBM, which is in the process of opening more outlets in Hyderabad. His batch mate Gaurav Aggarwal uses data technologies to help small retailers grow their business.
“A good management education equips a person with necessary tools and greater perspective to analyse complex situations,“ says D Chethan of IIM-K. His interest in agriculture led him to invest in a 10-acre plot and adopt highly mechanised techniques to grow horticultural crops such as chikoo, mango, black jamun, coconut and lemon alongside fast-growing timber-yielding varieties.
Despite the success of his business, Chethan still believes in the power of an MBA.
“I intend to expand my enterprise and enter new avenues such as food processing in the future,“ says Chethan.
For IIM-Bangalore's Sourav Das, who runs a startup in the solar technology space with an IITKharagpur batchmate, the MBA is a ticket to scale up his venture to the next stage. The partners sell solar mobile phone chargers -they have sold some 500 pieces through NGOs -and Das says he needs some guidance to fine tune his business plan.
Nitisha Sethia, of IIM-A who ran her own fashionwear business called Urban Junkie entirely through Facebook and earned around Rs 5 lakh through four exhibitions, says she loved the whole experience of running her own show.
“There has indeed been a spurt this year in the number of such student entrepreneurs at IIMs,“ IIM-Kozhikode Director Debashis Chatterjee said.
These new IIM students have built startups in mobile apps development, horticulture plantations, event management, solar-powered equipment, food-related businesses and coaching schools.
“The number of people in their 20s who are setting up their own ventures is at a new high,“ says Mukul Singhal, principal, SAIF Partners.
Global B-schools are giving a major push to foster entrepreneurship and domestic counterparts are also placing a similar premium on student startups.
“Entrepreneurial students are like allrounders in a cricket team. They are able to fully appreciate and participate in the whole process of creation of value...this is the ultimate goal of managing an enterprise,“ Chatterjee said.
At the Kozhikode B-school alone, around 15 students in the batch that joined in June are entrepreneurs. The batch at IIM-Kozhikode includes, among others, Bullipe Reddy who runs Prestoo, that builds educational games to teach and test high school students' concepts of physics, maths and chemistry; Krishnan Jeesha who provides outof-home advertising solutions to businesses; and Sumit Kumar Shaw, who has set up a coaching institute as well as a tour and travel company.
IIM-Calcutta has seven such student-entrepreneurs in its new batch; IIM-Bangalore has two and IIM-Ahmedabad has another six. Among the newer IIMs, IIM-Raipur has five such students while IIM-Rohtak and IIM-Shillong have three and four, respectively.
For these young entrepreneurs, an MBA comes with several advantages, most importantly , the network these top schools can provide and the opportunity to brush up their knowledge in areas that are lacking. And an IIM tag certainly doesn't hurt for those wanting to raise money for their own ventures.
“All other things being equal, we would prefer someone with a solid educational background.
A qualification from an IIM or an IIT does lend a bit more credibility when talking to a VC (venture capital fund) or an investor,“ says Abhay Pandey , MD, Sequoia Capital India. “Earlier, the entrepreneurial ecosystem was not so vibrant. Now it's great that people are taking a risk to work towards a much larger outcome,“ he adds.
So, if Aditya Pangtey of IIMCalcutta owns a third of Indiebazaar.com, a managed marketplace for Indian independent artists and designers, his peers at the Joka institute in clude Nikesh Vora, who found t ed AlterEgo, an e-comm ven j ture in the personalised gifting domain; and Pranshu Kacholia, a BITS-Pilani grad who cofounded a mobile app development startup called Droid Studios. His Android app saw as many as 30,000 downloads in six months. “I don't have the business or finance knowledge and that's where an MBA comes in. Also, I want to leverage IIM-Calcutta's network in the future,“ says Kacholia At IIM-Ahmedabad, students have co-founded ventures pro t viding software solutions; launched healthcare mobile t apps and app development startups; designed and prototyped a I product that harvests energy t from cooking stoves; and launched ventures aimed at addressing declining analytical abilities among school students.
Over 80% of the ventures promoted by this year's student en i trepreneurs are still operational. Many such students have partners or co-founders who l take on additional responsibilities while they are at school. The remaining 20% of student entrepreneurs, whose ventures closed f down, are keen to start something new again in the future.
“Entrepreneurship flourishes l when failure and experimentation is tolerated by societies. The i Indian society has reached a cer t tain inflection point when a new generation is not afraid of taking chances and experiment t ing,“ feels Prof Chatterjee.
In IIM-Shillong, businesses t run by students include consulting agency Innovative We; Epitome IT Coaching that focuses primarily on IT educa t tion and Xeopia Solutions, also in the same space. At IIM-Rai t pur, Pratik Suting, an aircraft maintenance engineer, ran his transcription company; Rajesh Jangam opened up a school and Satyadeo Thakur started his venture as a web hosting and designing company. In IIM-Rohtak, Pruthvi Ala, along with three friends, started a snacks business serving offices such as Accenture and IBM, which is in the process of opening more outlets in Hyderabad. His batch mate Gaurav Aggarwal uses data technologies to help small retailers grow their business.
“A good management education equips a person with necessary tools and greater perspective to analyse complex situations,“ says D Chethan of IIM-K. His interest in agriculture led him to invest in a 10-acre plot and adopt highly mechanised techniques to grow horticultural crops such as chikoo, mango, black jamun, coconut and lemon alongside fast-growing timber-yielding varieties.
Despite the success of his business, Chethan still believes in the power of an MBA.
“I intend to expand my enterprise and enter new avenues such as food processing in the future,“ says Chethan.
For IIM-Bangalore's Sourav Das, who runs a startup in the solar technology space with an IITKharagpur batchmate, the MBA is a ticket to scale up his venture to the next stage. The partners sell solar mobile phone chargers -they have sold some 500 pieces through NGOs -and Das says he needs some guidance to fine tune his business plan.
Nitisha Sethia, of IIM-A who ran her own fashionwear business called Urban Junkie entirely through Facebook and earned around Rs 5 lakh through four exhibitions, says she loved the whole experience of running her own show.
