Bangalore: His batchmates will be busy wooing and being wooed by recruiters this placement season, but 26-year-old Mainak Chakraborty, who will graduate in 2010 from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), has chosen to sit out the season. Chakraborty wants to start a company that will set up recharge centres for electric vehicles. And he is hoping to incubate the company at the institute’s NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL).
Across Indian campuses, incubation centres such as NSRCEL are breeding entrepreneurs.
Thinking different: (from left) IIM-B students Shekhar Gurav, Amarendra Sahu and Mainak Chakraborty. Most college incubators also encourage outsiders to seek on-campus support. Hemant Mishra / Mint
From start-up outfit Kollabia, an online platform for music composers, launched by a group of second-year students at the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore (IIIT-B), to an algorithmic trading platform incubated at the iAccelerator programme at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), to
Just Books Clc, an online book-lending company incubated at NSRCEL, the idea of entrepreneurship as a regular career choice is fast gaining ground at campuses countrywide. Chakraborty, for instance, is starting his company in association with two first-year management students.
“Having an incubator on campus definitely provides a fillip to students with entrepreneurial ideas,” says S. Rajagopalan, professor, IIIT-B. “On an average, about 25 students from our graduating batch of 126 have chosen entrepreneurship as a career.”
Tier-II institutes are following suit, but it’s early days yet. From a graduating batch of 200 MBA students from MATS Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship, Bangalore, typically about five-six students turn entrepreneurs. “We would be happy to incubate 100 students, but we find that there are not enough proposals coming in from students, most of whom prefer to join brand name companies in the early part of their careers,” says G. Lakshman, professor, marketing, at the institute.
Earlier this year, IIIT-B registered its on-campus incubation facility as a not-for-profit company, now called the IIIT-B Innovation Centre. It will provide monetary help in the form of grants and seed capital to start-ups, that in some cases are incubated for as long as three years.
“Also, IIIT-B and IIM-A will jointly collaborate to run the iAccelerator programme, where winning ideas in the wireless and Internet space are provided a small seed capital of Rs5 lakh and are mentored for four months on campus,” says Rajagopalan, adding that the first batch of start-ups to be incubated at IIIT-B will commence in December.
Similarly, the on-campus incubation facility at MATS Institute of Management and Entrepreneurship has provided support to 20 start-ups till date. These have been in areas of financial services, hospitality, manufacturing, education services, among others.