Bangalore: In a tightening job market, India’s business schools are going the extra mile to encourage entrepreneurship among students by offering mentoring services, space to work from and even seed capital.
To be sure, most maintain that their efforts have nothing to do with the economic slowdown but students seem more receptive this year as the current scenario has translated into fewer high-paying jobs.
Creating opportunities: XLRI Jamshedpur. Eight students set to graduate next month at this institution are planning to start ventures. This is the first time that fresh graduates here are turning to entrepreneurship. Indranil Bhoumik / Mint
The Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB), for instance, has in recent weeks started a number of initiatives to nurture entrepreneurship. Earlier, ISB restricted itself to research on entrepreneurship.
ISB students Deepesh Agarwal, 30, and Amit Gupta, 27, opted out of placement and instead incubated on campus a company they have founded. Their start-up, GoCars India, is a mobile and online platform that helps pooling of cars, taxis and cargo trucks.
Agarwal says he always wanted to strike out on his own and the “downturn is helping since both individuals and companies can save costs through shared transport.”
Gupta and Agarwal are not exceptions. At least 100 students out of a class of 440 at ISB are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. This compares with 70 firms that ISB graduates have started in the past seven years of its existence.
“We will provide work space, free accommodation on campus, mentoring, access to experts, as well as assistance in reaching out to investors,” says Krishna Tanuku, executive director at the Wadhwani Centre for Entrepreneurship Development at ISB.
There is an increasing interest in entrepreneurship due to the economic slowdown, according to Kumar K., professor and chairperson of the Nadathur S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.
Though IIM-B successfully found jobs last week for all students in the class of 2009, seven students opted out of the placement process to start ventures, compared with just two last year.
One of the seven, P. Kamalakanth, was set on joining the World Bank’s young professional programme until it was frozen because its largest funder, the US, is in recession. Since November, therefore, he has been focusing his energies on starting a clean energy and sustainable development consultancy service. “Had the (World Bank) programme been there I would not have entertained (the idea of) entrepreneurship,” says Kamalakanth, 31.
At XLRI Jamshedpur, eight students set to graduate next month are creating history at the 60-year-old institution by planning to start ventures. Though XLRI alumni have started businesses in the past, this is the first time that fresh graduates are turning to entrepreneurship.