That the Indian youth is undergoing a massive change in terms of enterprise and employment is something that becomes overwhelmingly evident when one meets and observes successful entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s riding the product startup wave. At a recent event at the science and technology park in SP College at Pune University, I came across several young people who had come up with various development processes in IT industry and launched their products in the market. In fact, five of these did so with financial and organisational support from the science and technology park. In a similar interaction in Chennai, I met 20 young people fully focused on creating a development industry by themselves. They were mostly focusing on topics that had links with making e-mails a powerful tool, developing a technology platform for e-commerce companies, or developing software that would help enforce sophisticated and uniform security standards across all digital services, among others. What is interesting to note is that the list of effective products by young entrepreneurs is rapidly increasing today. Such positive growth has drawn the attention of entities like national association of software and services companies (Nasscom) that have been great champions of ICT industries. Established in 1988, Nasscom is a trade association of India’s IT and business process outsourcing industry, and in order to encourage entrepreneurial growth, has launched a ‘10,000 startups’ programme, now in its third phase. In this programme, Nasscom has invited applications from technology startups across the country for angel funding and a national acceleration programme through its portal
www.10000startups.com. The response in the first two phases was good, say Nasscom sources, but this time around the association expects to be inundated with several thousand applications. From these, it will shortlist close to 500 entrepreneurs who will be eligible for funds ranging from Rs 25 lakh to Rs 2 crore through leading angel investor networks of the country.Selected startups will also be offered up to four months of incubation at leading incubators of India, along with co-working space at affordable costs. Nasscom, along with partners, will focus on multifold activities aimed at fostering entrepreneurship, building entrepreneurial capabilities at scale and providing robust early stage support through mentorship. This, clearly, seems the way forward, for startups today are amongst the most critical pillars of the Indian IT industry, representing a huge opportunity for India to retain its competitive advantage. Over the past few years, startups have contributed to the industry by building niche products and services and tapping non-core markets. To sustain the overall economic growth, it is imperative to have more entrepreneurs in the country who will transform the landscape and play a vital role in opening new opportunities for industry. The basic concept and characteristics of entrepreneurship are concerned with developing a vision of what a company should be, and then executing that vision by translating it into concrete steps. Entrepreneurs personally get involved in building and shaping their companies, but business success also depends on understanding personal limits, and developing strategies and systems to transcend these limits. As risk takers, successful entrepreneurs understand that failure can be a vital part of success, and that learning from mistakes can be a way of reaping benefits from situations that might otherwise feel like failures.
Businesses run on money, so entrepreneurs must have a solid sense of how to raise and manage funds. Successful entrepreneurs have an intuitive sense of how much money they will need to run their companies, but they supplement this sense with concrete documentation and calculations to mitigate uncertainties. Entrepreneurs are willing to risk money by making investments in building their businesses, but they keep a close eye on the numbers in order to understand how much they are spending and whether their expenditures are bringing about the desired results. Starting a business is a creative endeavour that starts with conceptualising a product or service, and then building a practical infrastructure that can sustain itself while delivering that product or service. Entrepreneurship requires creative problem solving as well as creative product development, and entrepreneurs have the creative freedom to think outside the box and develop unique strategies that balance personal values with practical constraints. Successful entrepreneurs see the big picture. They have the skills and the humility to define their own role in company operations, and the interpersonal skills to successfully delegate the tasks they can’t complete themselves. They are also prosperous managers, sharing the company’s vision and clearly communicating the ways that this vision is infused into mundane daily tasks. This clearly shows that there is deep link between startups and entrepreneurship. Our engineering colleges, therefore, need to focus on building entrepreneur management skills in their fundamental engineering programmes. The merger of fundamentals of engineering, application-oriented skill development, direct industry experiences in production and finance is the key for allowing youths to jump into startups. Taking a cue from organisations like Nasscom, the AICTE and UGC could jointly work on this aspect and make entrepreneurship a mandatory part of engineering education. – arun.nigavekar@mydigitalfc.com – (The writer is former chairman of UGC, former vice-chancellor of University of Pune and founder director of NAAC)
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