Not just job seekers, be a job creator

Entrepreneurship activities in India over the past few years have been on the rise owing to various dynamic initiatives and policies by the government. While the environment is conducive for entrepreneurs, education institutions in India are also playing an important role in developing entrepreneurial skills and by encouraging students to develop their own business models. In fact various successful start-ups were incubated in the university campus. This not only helps prepare students for the future world of work but also imparts them with crucial life skills thus promoting entrepreneurship and the economy.

Entrepreneurship is extremely vital for any economy, because of its ability to make a significant impact on citizens and nations as a whole. Great entrepreneurs can change the way the world lives and work, by creating jobs and wealth, with changes varying from social impact to innovations. An entrepreneurial environment can provide a much-needed boost to MSMEs and SMEs— the second-largest employment-generating sector after agriculture.

Our demography is our strength. It is time for us to focus on creating more job creators as India has the potential to become the innovation capital of the world. For India to become a product-oriented economy, entrepreneurship skills must be included in the course and should be taught at an early stage. Students must be trained to become entrepreneurs, not just job seekers.

Since education is essential to enhance thinking abilities and as the entrepreneurship ecosystem is developed by the interplay of universities, government, and entrepreneurs themselves, universities become a major source of fostering the required entrepreneurial environment. Early exposure to entrepreneurship and innovation is more likely to sow the seeds of entrepreneurial careers for students. Indian universities are embracing a culture of in-depth innovation to promote entrepreneurship and become a global soft power.

1. Existing initiatives

Several universities have included innovation in the curriculum. Entrepreneurship and innovation are taught across studies in management and engineering courses. Entrepreneurship cells exist in most universities and business plans are a new attraction during the annual festivals. Some universities go a step further and have added a 'maker space' to allow students to generate prototypes for their products.

2. Incubation centres

Universities can act as incubation centres to promote potential ideas by facilitating collaborations and incubation capacities not only for students from the area of business and entrepreneurship but also from other areas like engineering, humanities and medicine. They are provided with physical space to give wings to potential ideas and suitable support to raise funds at an early stage to transform these ideas into business models that are their added advantages for the development of the business model.

The faculty also play an important role in the incubators, as they are a vital resource for mentorship and can channelize the energy of their students by guiding research activities.

3. A bridge between academia and industry

Universities involved in research have a large number of patents, articles, and registered intellectual property rights, converging the joint efforts and experience of students and faculty. However, such research has to be commercialized as well, and here comes the role of universities as a facilitator for industry linkages.

By establishing connections with industry, universities create entrepreneurial ecosystems and provide students with guidance on different aspects like licenses, consulting and spin-offs.

Entrepreneurship education inspires students to start their own ventures. These courses have a positive impact on the student's abilities.

Entrepreneurs often have a desire to change things with their creative ideas and disruptive technologies. For this, youth need an environment, encouraging active risk-taking without the fear of failure. In today's time, many of India's unicorns have not just created wealth for their investors but have become huge employment generators and have acquired a scale that makes them potential world leaders. Most of our new-age entrepreneurs are developing products for a worldwide audience and are not opposed to audacious scale-ups that pushes them into a global arena.

(The author is the Assistant Professor, Electronics and Communications Engineering, NIIT University)