Placing students with startups is a new endeavor and both parties are simply lovig it
“I won a contest – and the prize was working with Consumer Vision,” a software startup, Gaurav Chaturvedi, a student at IIT Bombay, explained enthusiastically. Not cash, not an iPod, but rather a chance to work at a startup:
this unusual prize, and the excited response it engendered, point towards a new trend on top campuses across the country – a trend that holds potential benefits and risks for young companies.
Internships or student projects at large organizations have long been a fixture in academia. But as entrepreneurship programs develop on campuses, and the fascination with new ventures grips students, the students are starting to call for evermore real world entrepreneurship experience.
And startups are beginning to take advantage of this new resource pool. As Sivaprasad Cotipalli, founder of Dhanax Information Services explained, “We do work with students a lot. They have more ideas, fresh ideas; they are ready to try out new things. And they are also economical.”
| NEN: event |
| What: IIMC & NEN’s Entrepreneurship Summit |
| When: December 23, 2007 |
| Where: IIM Calcutta |
| Who: Open to all faculty, students, new and future entrepreneurs including working professionals |
| Event focus: What does it take to be an entrepreneur? How do you identify a good business opportunity? What are venture capitalists really looking for? How do you scale your startup? Hear VCs and entrepreneurs’ perspectives in four interactive sessions including the keynote session, talks, panel discussions and Q&As. |
| Speakers include: Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO, Rediff Kanwal Singh, MD, Helion Ventures Laura Parkin, ED, Wadhwani Foundation & NEN Pradeep Gupta, CEO, Cyber Media Sanjeev Bhikchandani, CEO, Infoedge (Naukri) More info at www.nenonline.org |
Abhay Panjiyar, the entrepreneur behind CEON Solutions, a company that delivers software solutions to schools, discovered similar advantages when bringing students on board, “At IIMA the students had a lot of experience. Working with these students gave me fresh ideas.”
Placing students with startups is still a fairly new endeavor. Entrepreneurship itself is new to most campuses, and the students’ interest takes time to mature to the extent that they want to spend time working with new ventures.
In addition, matching students with the right type of companies can be difficult: startups do not have the infrastructure devoted to creating opportunities for students, and many institutes simply don’t have a network of startups. Therefore, it’s not surprising to find that on several of the campuses that have successfully integrated students into new companies, those startups are actually housed within on-campus business incubators.
Prof. Rakesh Basant of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, explained, “Our students work with the incubatees on a regular basis as part of an existing model.” IIMA’s incubation activities were designed from inception to incorporate student involvement in the startups being incubated. Prof. Basant outlined the reasoning, “Startups tend to give exposure to a large number of activities. You become part of the confusion, in some sense, and in the process you end up learning a lot.”
The results of startup internships have included some very practical learning for the students. J Kavitha, Ethiraj College, admitted, “The first thing I learnt was how to behave and talk properly — how to communicate crisply and correctly. I want to start my own event management company. And for this I need to know how to deal with people.”
Yet other students live the entrepreneurial experience to an even greater extent. Abhishek Naik, student, BITS, Pilani, was one such student. “I didn’t have any salary because they were just beginning the company. But we had enrolled for a few B-plan contests and we won two of them. So we shared the money,” he said gamely.
Students feel that their startup experiences differ significantly from projects at larger companies. Aashima Sekri, a graduate of IIMA, shared, “This experience gave us the chance to look at the bigger picture. Would we have learnt this in a non-startup? Well, if the top management had taken us for larger projects then may be. But normally they don’t offer that to 24 year old management students!”
The benefits accrued also to the startups. Abhay Panjiyar, the founder of CEON Solutions, described his organization’s experience with IIMA students: “They helped with communications, writing, marketing, branding, and also business planning and VC pitches in the later stages. By the end of it we had re-organized our entire approach to the client, and our presentation had improved immensely. Their input on fundamentals and coming up with a USP for the product was especially brilliant.”
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
