STARTUP SPECIAL ....HOW TO MASTER STARTING UP

HOW TO MASTER STARTING UP





Some have business in their blood. Many don't.
But it's a skill that can be learnt, and entrepreneurship programmes are seeing a surge in student numbers

In 2007, engineering graduate Arul Shekhar wanted to start a business of his own. He thought he had some promising ideas. But the 24-year-old hadn't had any exposure to managing a business. So he joined IIT Madras' Masters course in entrepreneurship. In the first six months, he learnt about the basics of management. In the remaining time, all of IIT-M was open to him to seek ideas for his startup. Shekhar, together with friend Sridhar Lakshmanan, now runs an agri produce processing business, and a niche tourism venture.

“It was like a mini MBA. I thought I would do something in core tech given I was in IIT and came from an engineering background. The beauty of this programme is that they help you find what you want to do, besides providing all the infrastructure and networking help,“ Shekhar says.

Entrepreneurship courses have bloomed in the past few years, alongside the growing interest in starting up. The IITs, IIMs and a host of educational institutions today teach entrepreneurship either as fullfledged programmes or as electives. Some have had them for decades, but never has interest in those programmes been as much as now.

Even the students' intent of taking these programmes have changed. “While earlier they would take the elective to know more about entrepreneurship, they now take it with the purpose of start something on their own,“ says Prof S Subramanian of IIM-Kozhikode. He says of the batch of about 60, at least 10 would end up starting a venture immediately .

Are they necessary?

But how good or necessary are formal entrepreneurial education programmes in starting up? Subramanian points to the slew of failures in recent times, and says many have been because of internal issues, and the inability to manage working capital. “We have been researching on this, and I believe most of the failures could have been averted if the founders had formal education and prior training on how to manage a company ,“ he says.

N S Raghavan, co-founder of Infosys and an investor in startups, says such courses will provide learnings even for those who have entrepreneurship in their blood. “Marwaris don't need courses, but if they do go for one, they can possibly accelerate their growth. These courses help entrepreneurs to interpret their knowledge,“ he says.

Kumar K, chairperson of aca demic programmes at IIM Bangalore's entrepreneurship learning centre NSRCEL, thinks that institutes help entrepreneurs reflect on and organise their prior learnings for a better performance, apart from identifying their own strengths and limitations as business managers.

Among NSRCEL's programmes is a 40-day one for entrepreneurs and family businesses, where it gets twice as many applications as the businesses it can take into a batch.Kumar says many former participants have mentioned the benefit of realising the strength of their organisation and people ­ by being away from their business for forty days. “It helps them to question many of their assumptions and develop a more reasoned perspective on their own aspirations regarding their business,“ he says.

BITS Pilani, whose alumni has produced startups like Grey Orange Robotics, RedBus, Exotel, and others, has a course called New Venture Creation. It is a part of BITS Spark, where entrepreneurs from the BITS Alumni Community as well as many wellknown industry veterans from around the world deliver lectures. The students also work on startup ideas as a part of the course, they learn about security issues, legal isues, and the most promising ones get mentorship and initial investment.

Kalyan Krishnaswami, one of the team leads at BITS Spark, however, notes that academia remains important because it equips entrepreneurs with business knowledge and analytical skills. “And if I want to start a high-tech startup like in robotics or space technology or quantum computing, it requires a deep technical knowledge for which excellent academic knowledge like the ones imparted by universities is absolutely necessary,“ he says.

Evolving with the times

IIM Bangalore has changed its course over the years to provide the students a first-hand exposure to entrepreneurship. Classes are no longer just theorybased. Students are required to come out with a business plan and execute it, and this accounts for much of the evaluation process.

Ronnie Screwvala-backed UpGrad's online programme helps students approach entrepreneurship with the right framework, it teaches a few management lessons, and also how to do idea validation, business plan tracking and customer surveys. Upgrad's founder and CEO Mayank Kumar says that in its paid programme, more than 40% of the students has gone on to set up ventures, and among those who have, 10% has secured funding. The paid programme is personalised and everyone is offered curated mentorship.

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

In January, the government tied up with online education platform UpGrad to launch a free, four-week entrepreneurship programme in English and Hindi. In five months, the course received over 1.5 lakh applicants. More than two-thirds of these were from tier-2 or smaller cities.

The government's Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) is working closely with around 170 educational and research institutions to keep up with the demand for entrepreneurship learning and train faculty. Over 300 faculty members have been trained so far.“Eventually, we want colleges to have E-cells that will have 50-100 students each with one faculty member to mentor them. We are in talks with Anna University (Chennai) to give credits to students who take up these courses. We want to create an aspirational entrepreneurship culture,“ says K Rajaraman, director, EDI.

Shalina Pillai, Anand J & Ranjani Ayyar

TNN16JUL17