Entrepreneurship initiatives are on an all time high in B-schools (CSR initiatives too, though more on that later). Its amazing to see the high amount of management students interested in starting their own businesses; although some of them do admit that their zest is influenced by the lack of suitable jobs in the market.
Whatever be the case, starting up is in today, and again b-schools are not behind in giving the latest to their students. The e-cells or the committees looking after entrepreneurship have been revamped and are now infused with more enthusiasm. There are innovative competitions for students to discuss b-plans, plan their future companies and probably even get some funding for their ventures. For example the entrepreneurship competition by FMS (which has gone international from the year 2009) claims to offer up to Rs. 6 crores in funding to the winning team. A similar competition is held by IMT-Ghaziabad where the students select 24 best entrepreneurs for whom they develop an IPO. Apart from that many schools have started new courses on entrepreneurship or revised their existing courses to fit in the changes in the industry.
Guest lectures on campus by existing entrepreneurs, explaining how they worked through their initial hardships and developed their companies are also on the rise. Recently, IIM Banglore invited Rashmi Bansal, the famous author of Stay Hungry Stay Foolish (which is itself a book about MBA graduates who did not take the obvious path of a high paying job but decided to start something of their own) to deliver a guest lecture for their annual entrepreneurship summit. Many such summits are part of the event calendar at b-schools today and are equivalent in hype and enthusiasm of the more popular marketing and finance summits held in the institutes.
However, even with all the efforts taken by institutes to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship in students, the students who actually start their own ventures hardly sum up to double figures. This is indicative of the fact that although the interest and enthusiasm of the students towards starting their own ventures has increased, a huge gap still exists between those who want to and those who actually start a business. One of the reasons for this can be the highly expensive MBA courses and consequently the high amount of education loans that the students have to pay after they graduate. Many of them thus prefer the safe and secure path of a job. Another reason is due to the lack of the right information on startups present in the industry; with more information present on the experiences of entrepreneurs after they started their businesses and not about their initial hurdles and what they did to get over them. Absence of a risk-taking culture can also be termed as a factor.
The initiative by b-schools today should be to make entrepreneurship more viable as a career option for a country where job security and safe career paths still rule the mindset of majority of the people.