Student Enterprising (SE) What and Why?

MobME...... A Story of a Student Enterprise..


Sanjay Vijayakumar belongs to the new breed of Indian youth who are unheard but fearless. Starting an entrepreneurial journey at the age of 22 while in fifth semester of engineering, Sanjay led and created a team of engineering graduates who were passionate about technology to build up MobME, one of India’s most exciting and innovative mobile companies.



MobME raised half a million dollars from angel investors based out of Dubai and Silicon Valley including the ex-GM and VP of Nortel. Defying convention in India, Sanjay dropped out in final semester and turning down jobs at MS and Yahoo to scale up MobME, building a team of 60 spread across offices in Trivandrum, Cochin, Mumbai, and Delhi.

MobME has a slew of innovative products ranging from sms to voice to a media factory churning out mobile content. The company is focused on developing its mobile content sharing platform christened Mobshare, which is the leading and preferred platform by leading mobile operators, media companies, and marketing agencies for mobile community, photo and video sharing solutions powering Airtel, Vodafone, BSNL, and MTNL.

In 2006, the company was rated as one of India’s 100 Innovative Startups by NASSCOM and in 2007 was the youngest of the NASSCOM 100 IT Innovators alongside TI, HP, and Infosys. MobME was also amongst the Wall Street Journal 10 Startups to watch for in India in 2008 and was voted winner by NASSCOM as India’s Most Innovative Company for 2009. MobME is today rated amongst the 50 Emerging IT Companies in India.

Sanjay is a regular speaker at national and international conferences including the 3rd 3G International Conference and the Web Innovation 2.0 and is amongst the Board of Governors of Technopark Technology Business Incubator and the World HR Forum. He is currently setting up the Indian Telecom Innovation Hub at Cochin including a telecom focused technology business incubator along with the Department of Science and Technology, GoI in Cochin, Kerala. Sanjay is also selected for the Star Entrepreneurship Award at the 3rd International India Innovation Summit 2010.

A national and university basketball player, Sanjay has led the college team to various tournaments and played professional basketball in Kerala before being bit by the entrepreneur bug. He now dreams of the day when the sun sets in the Valley at dusk, it would rise to see the dawn of a Silicon Coast in India.

MobME Wireless is one of India's most innovative technology companies in the telecom vertical. The company provides value added services, core network solutions and enterprise solutions to telecom operators, enterprises and government organizations. Innovation has been in the DNA of this young and exciting company. MobME has been voted as the best ICT startup by ISBA.

Sanjay did something unexpected. He saw opportunities while in college and founded a business just out of passion. On top of it, he has achieved success. We are eager to know his entrepreneurial viewpoint that he puts across to Indian startup EMERGEOUT initiative by NASSCOM.

1. Why did you take up entrepreneurship journey?

Sanjay: The co-founders of MobME Wireless were from similar backgrounds in Kerala. Coming from middle class families, education and employment were the most sought after social parameters. The team found each other while doing a marketing activity for a mobile operator in 2005, which sparked the different strengths. The urge to do something different was the primary driving force behind treading the entrepreneur route.

2. What keeps you going (how and where do you find your motivation levels)?

Sanjay: Our mentors are our guides and we continuously interact with senior people in the industry. It is very important to carry a very positive frame of mind as well.

3. What is your advice to wannabe entrepreneurs in India?

Sanjay: It’s never too late and it’s never too early for striking out as an entrepreneur. All that you need is the fire in your belly, the guts to make a decision, and the courage to face the consequences of your decisions. The team that is MobME is just like anyone of you. We belong to normal middle class families and have nothing out of the world in us. We live in this amazing country and opportunities are endless here for all of us. When we dreamed of starting a company, the entire society right from Mammotty to Kris Gopalakrishnan was there to extend their support to us. There are many people out there who will support any young entrepreneur and together it is possible to dream of a day when the sun sets at dusk in the valley, it will rise to see the dawn of a silicon coast in India. The opportunity is out there. Grab it, Seize it! Be an Entrepreneur!

4. What success means to you and your organization?

Sanjay: Success to us means to be able to create a change in the lives of others. Today when we are able to support a few bright yound minds with educational scholarships from the very same college we graduated from, it gives a great sense of pride and joy. In the next few years, we hope to have an IPO, which would be one of the strong milestones and something that would be a success for us.

5. What are your learnings from the failures?

Sanjay: Being an entrepreneur is great as the real life learning never stops. Everyday we face challenges and the fact that over the last four years, we have been successfully able to overcome these challenges give us confidence to make the next big moves.

We have learnt to keep failures behind us as if we are not failing, we may not be trying hard enough. Sanjay is a daring entrepreneur. Being able to start a company while in college needs “fire in your belly … and courage to face the consequences of your decisions” in his own words. Maybe he is the harbinger of the entrepreneurial revolution in India where college grads get bitten by the entrepreneurial bug.

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Entrepreneurship Education Awards @ NITIE 2009

LASE DATE receiving entries EXTENDED TO
12  OCT  2009 

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THE HARIJAN ARTICLES

In August, 1937 Mahadev Desai, editor of Harijan and Gandhi’s personal secretary, informed his readers that, from the moment the Congress had resolved to accept office, Gandhi had been ‘devoting all his waking hours to the problem of prohibition and mass educational’ (H 5:227). Between May and October 1937, through various articles on the subject and through his responses to letters and criticism, Gandhi proceeded to outline the basis of his plans for educating India. The views that he put forth at this time have since become known variously as ‘ nai talim’ (meaning ‘ new education’), ‘basic national education’ or, simply, basic education’. The purpose of this chapter is to present these seminal views as directly and lucidly as possible. A full contextual discussion of the scheme will be the subject of later chapters, but the present concern is rather to allow these texts to speak for themselves.

Holism: Body, Mind and Spirit

As a starting point, it is important to realize that Gandhi’s views on the development of the individual are essentially holistic. In an article written in May 1937, entitled ‘Intellectual Development or Dissipation?’, Gandhi develops the central premise that ‘ Man is neither mere intellect, nor the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone’. He goes on to assert that, ‘A proper and harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education’. Gandhi contends that the widespread neglect of this principle is everywhere evident, no only amongst the unlettered but also amongst the so-called educated. He finds in the villages that the endless mechanical drudgery of the laborers deprivers them of all scope for developing their mind and soul, and that they have hence’ sunk to the level of the beast’. Equally, in the schools and colleges of the cities, he finds that intellectual training, divorced as it is from physical work, produces an imbalance just as pernicious. And as for the faculties of the heart’ of such students, they are simply allowed to’ run to seed or to grow anyhow in a wild undisciplined manner.’ ‘The result,’ he laments, ‘is moral and spiritual anarchy’ Gandhi then proceeds to outline his vision of an alternative pedagogy:

As against this, take the case of a child in whom the education of the heart is attended to from the very beginning, Supposing he is set to some useful occupation like spinning, carpentry, agriculture, etc., for his education and in that connection is given a thorough and comprehensive knowledge relating to the theory of the various operations that he is to perform and the use and construction of the tools that he would be wielding. He would not only develop a fine, healthy body but also a sound, vigorous intellect that is not merely academic but is firmly rooted in and is tested from day to day by experience. His intellectual education would include a knowledge of mathematics and the various sciences that are useful for an intelligent and efficient exercise of his avocation. If to this is added literature by way of recreation, it would give him a perfect well-balanced, all-round education in which the intellect, the body and the spirit have all full pay and develop together into a natural, harmonious whole. (H 5: 104)

Manual training as Medium, or ‘Correlation’

Instruction through the medium of handicrafts thus became for Gandhi the ‘pivot and centre of education’ (H 5:130). For him this was an entirely new conception. ‘I must confess,’ he noted in 1937, ‘that up to now all I have said is that manual training must be given side by side with intellectual training. But now I say that manual training should be the principal means of stimulating the intellect’.⁴ Two of Gandhi’s own examples suffice to explain the psychology of this new principle, which has since been called ‘correlation’.

Questions may be asked how intelligence can be developed through the takli or the spinning wheel. It can to a marvellous degree if it is not taught merely mechanically. When you tell a child the reason for each process, when you explain the mechanism of the takli or the wheel, when you give him the history of cotton and its connection with civilization itself and take him to the village field where it is grown, and teach him to count the rounds he spins and the method of finding the evenness and strength of his yarn, you hold his interest and simultaneously train his hands, his eyes and his mind. (H: 5:130)

A carpenter teaches me carpentry. I shall learn I mechanically form him, and as a result I shall know the use of various tools, but that will hardly develop my intellect. But if the same thing is a taught to me by one who has taken a scientific training in carpentry, he will stimulate my intellect too. Not only shall I have become an expert carpenter but also an engineer. For the expert will have taught me mathematics, also the differences between different types of timber, the place where they come from, giving me thus a knowledge of geography and also a knowledge of elementary geometry and arithmetic. (H 5:246)

To conduct the essentials of education through manual training obviously relegated the importance of book learning. But Gandhi did not hesitate to assert that literacy in itself was no education; he maintained that it was neither ‘the end of education nor even the beginning. It is only one of the means whereby man and woman can be educated’ (H 5:197). Aside from its pedagogical worth, Gandhi also appreciated that manual training should be given pride of place for functional reasons. In India’s largely agrarian economy, schooling should be vocational, a view which he had explained in detail many years previously:

…whatever may be true of other countries, in India at any rate where more than eighty per cent of the population is agricultural and another ten per cent industrial, it is a crime to make education merely literary, and to unfit [ sic] boys and girls for manual work in after-life. Indeed I hold that as the larger part of our time is devoted to labour for earning our bread, our children must from their infancy be taught the dignity of such labour. Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour… It is a sad thing that our school boys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt.

Mother Tongue

In time with most other Indian nationalist thinkers, Gandhi saw that it was natural and indeed essential for Indian children to be educated in their various mother tongues: ‘We have to make them true representatives of our culture, our civilization, of the true genius of our nation’, he noted (H 5:324). Gandhi believed that instruction in English had cast upon the educated class ‘a burden which has maimed them mentally for life and made them strangers in their own land’. He also maintained that its effect had been to create ‘a permanent bar between the highly educated few and the uneducated many’ (H 5:282). In his view, English-medium instruction was entirely superfluous and unnecessarily time-consuming. It is for this reason that he believed the course of schooling could be made much shorter, with children beginning their education at age seven and completing at age 14.

He stated:

I should combine into one what you call now the primary education and secondary or high school education.. If you cut out English from the curriculum altogether, without cutting out the subjects you teach, you can make the children through the whole course in seven years instead of eleven. (H 5:246)

English-medium instruction was only one of the many perceived defects of the British system of education, and the significance of the colonial system as a backdrop to Gandhi’s views shall be discussed in due course.

Self-Support

In his deliberations over compulsory mass education, rightly or wrongly, Gandhi initially raised the matter in connection with the issue of prohibition, which had been a Congress priority since the 1920s. The dilemma was whether it was possible to have both: ‘The cruellest irony of the new reforms,’ he wrote, ‘lies in the fact that we are left with nothing but liquor revenue to fall back upon, in order to give our children education. That is the educational puzzle’ (H 5:222).⁵ Gandhi’s proposed solution was without precedent in the world history of education. Instead of being paid for from excise revenue, he believed that Indian’s national system of education could and should be made self-sufficient:

But as nation, we are so backward in education that we cannot hope to fulfil our obligations to the nation in this respect in a given time during this generation, if the programme is to depend on money. I have therefore made bold, even at the risk of losing, all reputation for constructive ability, to suggest that education should be self-supporting… I would therefore begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training. Thus every school can be made self-supporting, the condition being that the State takes over the manufactures of these schools. (H 5:197)

Whether it was unavoidable or not, it is quite clear, however, that this early connection of educations with the problem of prohibition was less than helpful, since it leads some to believe that the scheme was constructed simply out of financial expediency. In September, therefore, he felt it necessary to clarify his position, and dismissed the idea that self-supporting education sprang from the necessity of achieving total prohibition as soon as possible; ‘Both are independent necessities’, he wrote (H 5:261).

In Gandhi’s mind, self-supporting education was therefore an important option for other reasons. For a start, he believed that the proposition, although ‘startling’ was’ perfectly feasible and eminently reasonable’ (H 5:181). In an article written in Harijan in September 1937, Narhari Parikh, a teacher at the Harijan Ashram at Sabarmati, provided a table of figures as an empirical defence of self-supporting education (see Appendix I). Along with other pursuits, girls at the Harijan Ashram had been devoting three hours a day to the activities of spinning, carding and weaving. At this rate, Parikh found that twenty-five ten-year-olds were able to make an average of 12 annas⁶ per month, thus supporting his assertion that ‘s class of students of the age of ten years and above can be made very nearly, if not altogether, self-supporting through spinning’ (H 5:243). Later that month Gandhi displayed a quiet confidence in these results; ‘They are not conclusive,’ he remarked, ‘they are encouraging. They supply good data to an enthusiast’ (H 5:265). But elsewhere he had expressed his convictions regarding self-support rather more vociferously. ‘Public school must be frauds and teachers idiots, if they cannot become self-supporting’, he proclaimed; and he went on:

…corporate labour should be, say after the first year of the course, worth one anna per hour. Thus for twenty-six working days of four hours per day, each child will have earned Rs.6-8-0 per month … We should be intellectual bankrupts, If we cannot direct the energy of our children so as to get from them, after a year’s training, one anna worth of marketable labour per hour.

(H 5:256)

Gandhi’s confidence in the practicality of self-supporting, although abrasive, was not ill-founded as we shall see when we examine the historical development development of his views. But the question of why he believed in it so fervently is a more complex one. Part of his motives were undoubtedly financial; the task of educating India’s millions would be an undertaking of colossal propositions for which there were simply no funds. By one estimate, the extent of literacy I British India at the time was no more than 10%, and less than 2% among women.⁷ This issue of sheer coverage, let alone quality, was brought to the attention of Harijan readers by Mahadev Desai:

The Director of Public Instruction, C.P. [Central provinces], who saw Gandhiji, said that in C.P. for 40,000 villages in the province there were only 5,000 schools which were within reach of 16,000 villages. The remaining 24,000 villages were without any school or educational facility within reach whatsoever. How can this mass illiteracy be liquidated? (H 5:251).

A second reason for Gandhi’s belief in self-support was that to produce saleable items would be a kind of quality control, a check put a place to ensure that the education imparted had been truly vocational. His scheme of education can also therefore be understood as facilitating a form of economic planning. In answer to a questioner who asked why self-support was necessary, Gandhi’s reply was:

That will be the test of its value. The child at the age of 14, that is a after finishing a seven year’s course, should be discharged as an unit … You impart education and simultaneously cut at the roots of unemployment

The third reason why self-support is essential to Gandhi’s theory of education is the most critical to its success, but at the same time is paradoxically the most ill-defined by Gandhi, his contemporaries and subsequent writers. We have already seen how, in Gandhi’s holistic conception of the individual, the body, mind and spirit must all develop together, and how the medium of handicraft is to be employed to that end. We have also through to light Gandhi’s understanding of how both the mind and the body can be trained effectively through craft. Yet the crucial linkage between the craft-medium and the spirit, the third point in this triadic relationship, is never properly or explicitly outlined. The closest Gandhi comes to an explanation is that craft training results in ‘the conservation of the intellectual energy and indirectly also the spiritual’ (H 5:130, italics added). This conception has its corresponding opposite in his earlier assertion that, under conventional education, the ‘faculties of the heart’ are simply allowed to ‘run to seed or to grow anyhow in a wild undisciplined manner’ (H 5:104). But a proper explanation of the crucial link is still missing. How indeed does craft training develop one’s spirituality? How does it make one a better person? Here are three writers, one a contemporary of Gandhi, attempting to grapple with the problem.

[craft work] incidentally makes the boy more ‘peaceful’ and assiduous; being productive work, it relates the boy’s activity to his environment and the society in which he lives; and, lastly, by imparting instruction through some serious craft not only the boy’s practical intelligence is trained but he gets the conception of labour as a moral force. (N.R. Malkani, H 5:332)

A sharp intellect can be cultivated through other methods, but then it may not be socially developed. On the other hand, an intellect developed through the medium of socially useful manual labour must of necessity become an instrument of service. Mere intellectual training ordinarily makes a child individualistic. But education through work and activities brings him in contact with other children in cooperation with whom he has to work. (Avinashilingam 1964, 63)

From the beginning [Gandhi] had seen that the vigorous manual work to meet the needs of a family or community was the basis both of physical health and of an ethic of generous sharing and mutual respect. (Sykes 1988, 34)

But still the link is not there. It is this: the reason why self-support is vital to Gandhi’s scheme of education is because it is a moral obligation. To support oneself means that one will not exploit one’s neighbors. And so the reason, and the only reason, why craft work can be a ‘spiritual’ activity is because it enables, and so hopefully encourages, the child to become self-reliant. The causal sequence becomes: craft work – self-support – moral development. Self-support is intimately connected with the nonviolence of Gandhi’s world view, and this is theme to which we shall return when we discuss the implications of his educational vision.

Higher education

Higher education was effectively left out of Gandhi’s proposed scheme of education, since he felt it could be left to private enterprise:

I would revolutionize college education and relate it to national necessitates. There would be degrees for mechanical and other engineers. They would be attached to the different industries which should pay for the training of the graduates they need. Thus the tats would be expected to run a college to training engineers under the supervision of the State, the mill associations would run among them a college for training gradates whom they need. Similarly for the other industries that may be named. Commerce will have its college. There remain arts, medicine and agriculture. Several private arts colleges are today self-supporting. The state would, therefore, cease to run its own. Medical colleges would be attached to certified hospitals. As they are popular among monied men they may be expected by voluntary contributions to support medical colleges. And agricultural college to be worthy of the name must be self-supporting.

The above is one of the only pronouncements on higher education that Gandhi made at this crucial time in the development of his scheme. His call for no public or state intervention in this area received considerable criticism. However, this lack of attention is an indication that his overriding concern at this stage was instead the pressing needs of India’s predominantly poor.

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Behatar Padhai kay liye… Kamai .. ! !

Two days Faculty Development workshop on the theme

Student Enterprises

Jan 12 – 13, 2009 @ NITIE Mumbai

(For faculty members working in UG and PG colleges)

“ Orientation for entrepreneurship has to start right from the schools. Teachers need to teach the role of entrepreneurship in national development in the schools. During college education, students must be exposed to business development opportunities and must be trained towards creation of new enterprises…”

Bharat Ratna Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, Former President of India,

Address to the Nation on the eve of Republic Day 26th Jan 2007.

1. Genesis of Student Enterprises workshop for Faculty members :

With the objective to promote student enterprising in various colleges in the country, it was found necessary to train the faculty members for practicing the student enterprising. Towards this, this two days workshop is designed by NITIE Center for Student Enterprising.

2. Workshop Objectives

v To create awareness about Student Enterprising as a pedagogy

v To enlighten the faculty members of student enterprises through demonstration of live student enterprise cases

v To share among the faculty members possible ways to develop student enterprises

3. Coverage

v Need for innovation in educational pedagogies

v Student Enterprises – What, why and how?

v Select cases of student enterprises

v Possible areas for implementation of student enterprises

v Action Plan for future

4. Participation of the faculty members

In all thirteen (13) faculty members from various colleges in the country have registered and 12 faculty have attended the program.

5. Outcome of the workshop

Ø Concept of student enterprising is interesting innovative, and the need of the hour.

Ø There is need to establish at least one Center for Student Enterprises in each of the states in the country so as to spread the concept across the country.

Ø Student enterprising pedagogy can be used for enabling learning for all kinds of subjects, students and all places irrespective of nature and type.

Ø Best way to implement this pedagogy is by making it mandatory and academic weight needs to be given for successful implementation of the same.

Ø There is need to create awareness about the concept among the faculty and academic administrators in the country. To achieve this, there is need to conduct many FDPs on the theme of student enterprising.

Ø Further, there is need to give monetary incentives and awards to the faculty, students so as to embrace the student enterprising in a major way.

NITIE Center for Student Enterprises (NCSE) - Goal

Harnessing and converting one crore Indian UG and PG students’

time, talent, energy and potential into real Student Enterprises

and utilizing the same for achieving Educational Effectiveness

all across the educational sphere.

- // -

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Behetar Padhai ke liye…. Kamai ! !




National Entrepreneurship Education Awards
Oct 25, 2008, @ NITIE Mumbai
Conducted by
NITIE Center for Student Enterprises




“Orientation for entrepreneurship has to start right from the schools. Teachers need to teach the role of entrepreneurship in national development in the schools. During college education students must be exposed to business development opportunities and must be trained towards creation of new enterprises…”
Bharat Ratna, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, Former President of India

A Report on National Entrepreneurship Education Awards (NEEA), 25 Oct 2008, @ NITIE Mumbai

National Entrepreneurship Education Awards ( NEEA) are launched by NITIE Center for Student Enterprises (NCSE), a project promoted by DST – NSTEDB, at NITIE. The purpose of these awards is to recognize the efforts of academic institutions, distinguished faculty and student entrepreneurs in the country who are propelling through their efforts entrepreneurship development in the country. Towards this NCSE has taken a lead to launch National Entrepreneurship Education Awards.

Nominations for the awards are invited from all over the country. There is extremely good response in terms of the quality of the nominations that we have received. After multiple levels screening, following nominations in three categories are awarded the certificates of recognition and cash prizes for the awardees.

 Best Student Enterprise Award :

M / S. Naboo Solutions Pvt. Limited – An enterprise run by NIT K Suratkal Engineering College Student Entrepreneurs - Certificate and Rs.15,000 /-Cash prize
M / S. Hellointern – An enterprise run by IIT B Student Entrepreneurs - Certificate and Rs.8,000 /-Cash prize

 Best Faculty – Entrepreneurship Education Award : Certificate and Rs.5,000 /-Cash prize for each of the faculty members

Ms. Dr. P Jyothi, Associate Professor, Central University Hyderabad

Ms. Vasanthi Venugopal – Faculty Member Mount Carl College, Bangalore

Ms. Radha Iyer, Faculty member, SIMSR , Mumbai

 Best Academic institution – Entrepreneurship Education Award : Certificate of recognition…

Acharya Institute of Management and Sciences ( AIMS) Bangalore

Senior English Medium Commerce College (SIMCER) , Anand, Gujarath

Awards ceremony was presided over by Dr S D Awale, Director, NITIE and Guest of honours include – Mr DSN Murthy CEO Dhnush Infotech and Mr R Suresh, MD StantonChase International, Mr. Nemade, Managing Partner, Nikhil Comforts. Faculty members, education administrators, students, and entrepreneurs in a big number have attended the awards ceremony conducted at NITIE Mumbai on 25 Oct 2008 1700 hours.

These Awards are being conducted in association with DST – NSTEDB, Dhanush Infotech, Stantonchase International, Nikhil Comforts, Control Case, TiE and NeN, SIDBI Ventures. Note worthy point noted here is that – All the cash prizes for the awardees were sponsored by none other than the NITIE Alumni Entrepreneurs. Their spirit is commendable which is laudable.

Final Word:
There is need for developing entrepreneurship in the country. The task is gigantic taken the vast country like India and the sheer count of population. Few excellent institutions working for entrepreneurship development at the national level cannot be the solution for this gigantic problem. There is need to enable multitude of academic institutions, students, and teachers to commit for this task. There are people and they look for Prerana. If that motivation is provided, they jump in and take up this task and commit for the cause.

There is need to motivate large number of students, teachers and academic institutions in the country to commit for entrepreneurship as part of creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem which promotes entrepreneurship development in India. National Entrepreneurship Education Awards ( NEEA) are one such small and humble attempt in this direction. We look forward for your feedback from you all. We strongly believe that we will meet with success with the best wishes of the many of you in this journey.

Welcome to Next version of National Entrepreneurship Education Awards ( NEEA) due in Oct 2009. A hearty welcome to the awards ….

Dr T Prasad, Coordinator, National Entrepreneurship Education Awards ( NEEA)
Faculty Adviser, NITIE Center for Student Enterprises.

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Hamara Dhandha
‘ Inspirers’ for our Student Enterprising @ NITIE

APJ Abdul Kalam ‘Wings of Fire: Autobiography ‘ p.8
“ I used to collect the seeds and sell them to a provision shop on Mosque Street. A Days collection would fetch me the princely sum of one anna “.
“ The news papers now had to be bundled and thrown out from the moving train on the Rameshwaram Road between Rameshwaram and Dhanuskodi. That forced Samsuddin to look for a helping hand to catch the bundles and, as if naturally, I filled the slot. Samsuddin helped me earn my first wages, Half a century later, I can still feel the surge of pride in earning my own money for the first time”.



Michael Dell, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Dell Inc. while at the University of Texas at Austin, started a computer company called PC’s Limited in his room in Dobie Center. A part from many of the achievements, Dell as of 2007, Forbes estimates Michael Dell’s net worth at $ 15.8 billion, making him the 30th richest person in the world and the 9th richest American.


Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson’s first successful business venture was at age 15, when he published a magazine called Student. At the age of 21 years, Branson then set up a record mail-ordered business in 1970. In 1971, he opened a chain of record stores, Virgin Records, now known as Virgin Megastores.
Mr. Suhas Gopinath, still a student pursuing his under graduation course in engineering in southern India launched his own website, “ www.coolhindustan.com “ when he had still not crossed 14 years. In the year 2000, at the age of 14 years, Suhas Gopinath founded his own firm ‘ Globals Inc ’ in San Jose, California. Mr Gopinath is often referred to as “ Global Youngest CEO “ .




Hamara Dhandha
Inspirers for our Student Enterprising @ NITIE

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NITIE Center for Student Enterprises ( NCSE)
NITIE Campus, Viharlake, Mumbai – 87
( A unit funded by Dept. of Science and Technology, NSTEDB, GOI )
Dr. T. Prasad
Faculty Adviser, NCSE
tprasad@nitie.edu




Enforce Entrepreneurship Education
….not just Encourage



National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) Mumbai, India established fully dedicated “ NITIE Center for Student Enterprises (NCSE) “ with a view to encourage entrepreneurship among the emerging youth of India; with a determination to enmesh the youth with the developmental initiatives that are in offing in India, and counter the unemployment problem in most innovative way . NCSE is the first of its kind of attempt to integrate enterprising with regular academic process leading to entrepreneurship development among the youth.
Department of Science and Technology, Government of India has appreciated venture and selected it for full funding.

VISION
Emergence of every student to be an Enterprising person

MISSION
Creation of intellectual, informational, institutional infrastructure to nurture student enterprising
To serve as a national center for research, education, training and extension of student enterprising

OBJECTIVES
Intellectual: To develop an understanding of the concept of Student Enterprising among the academic faculty, students, administrators and policy makers
Informational : Developing appropriate literature on student enterprising by creation, collection and dissemination of literature on entrepreneurship education both at national and international levels
Infrastructural : Developing appropriate organizational apparatus and forums for introduction, implementation, furtherance and spread of student enterprising

DELIVERABLES
Creating an effective pedagogy to introduce student enterprising from Post Graduation to Kinder Garden levels
Contribute to massive growth in number of startups by students and
Reduction in ‘Time To Become Entrepreneur’ (TTBE) for potential entrepreneurs
Developing number of case studies related to student enterprising
A Journal dedicated for the cause of Student Enterprise and Education
Creation of National body “ National Student Enterprises Board ( NSEB) for promotion of student enterprising - // -

Philosophical Questions for NCSE Project:


What is the need for NCSE project..?

What is the ultimate the thing that NCSE wants to achieve?

For what the NCSE project is meant for..?

What are the expected outcomes of NCSE project in next FIVE years?

What happens to the NCSE project when ones it is got over after Five years or so..?

What methodology NCSE project is applying at present to realize its objectives.. ?

What visible things are expected to be created due to NCSE project? What and When – is there any time line set for these outcomes?

How the present activities undertaken at the NCSE are aligned with objectives achievement?

What is the route map for the NCSE ?

What other complementing organizations working on this theme..? If there are any..?

What kind of relationship will be between NITIE and NCSE at present ?

What kind of relationship will be between NITIE and NCSE for future ?

What are NCSE expectations from NITIE?

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Why Students Make Great Entrepreneurs ? by Dharmesh Shah, 2004
Having been involved, either in an informal or formal capacity over the years, I have found that many startup founders that I know began their companies while they were still students (undergraduate or graduate) or shortly after they graduated. This brought to mind the question of whether or not students made good entrepreneurs. I think so. Here are the reasons. Disclaimer: Two of the three companies I’ve founded myself were done when I was in “student mode”. One as an undergraduate (computer science) and the other as a graduate (MBA). Why Students Make Great Entrepreneurs ?
Starry-Eyed Optimism: Let’s face it, starting a company takes a fair amount of optimism. You have minimal resources, and the odds are severely stacked against you. To overcome this potentially troubling reality, founders must to some degree exercise suspension of disbelief and demonstrate a degree of optimism to take that initial step. I think this is easier to do when you’re a student. You’re more equipped to be optimistic than if you were a corporate drone trudging through life with Dilbertian bosses and having the life energy slowly drained out of you. Students (in general) are happier people and more capable of the optimism that is required to get started. Clearly, there are exceptions to this. I’m sure there are a few people in corporate land that are not faking satisfaction or happiness, and are generally optimistic people. My hat’s off to them. The world needs people like you to help make big companies functional so the rest of us can use your products and services.
Trusted Peer Network: One of the great things about being a student is that you have the opportunity to meet and work with a lot of different people. If you do it right, you can get to know some of these people pretty well by working on projects with them and hanging out with them outside of class. This group of people can often make great co-conspirators and collaborators. On the other hand, if you’re stuck in a big corporate world, chances are you’re interacting with a limited set of people with very well defined activities many of whom you may not like anyways. Why is this so? Simple, because in corporate-land you often don’t get to pick who you work with. When you’re a student, to some degree, you get to pick who you “hire” for your social and academic groups. One of the single largest contributors to startup success is the ability for more than one person (however exceptional) to come together and collaborate.
Higher Risk Tolerance: Let’s face it, when you’re a student your opportunity cost is likely lower than most other points in your career (even if you’ve been in the workforce for a little while and decided to go back and get that MBA). When you’re sitting there in class and an idea comes to you, it doesn’t really cost all that much to give things a try. Besides, who needs all that sleep anyways? Students often find it easier to take the initial entrepreneurial leap because the new startup idea isn’t competing with a regular paycheck. It’s competing with classes and academic work. Many academic programs (even the excellent ones) don’t consume 100% of the available energy of an entrepreneurially minded student. There’s time left over for starting companies.
Abstract Thinking: In many academic programs (and especially the better ones), students spend a fair amount of time thinking about abstract concepts. This is particularly true in an engineering, computer science or even a business program. Learning about things like microeconomics, data structures or calculus is to learn about abstract ways to think about complicated things. You look for patterns and structures and frameworks to explain the world. As it turns out, this kind of thinking is very useful when it comes to thinking strategically (but objectively) about a startup. Without this, it becomes too easy to focus too much on tactics and execution -- without sufficient thought to the larger problem. Since students are exposed to a fair amount of abstract thinking, it may come a little easier to them to think about strategy, competition and how their offering might (just might) change the world.
Applied Learning: As a student, you’re quite often “drinking from a fire hose” and bringing all sorts of new information into your brain. Some of which “sticks” and some of which doesn’t. Along the way, a few of these concepts may shake your understanding of the world a bit and every now and then light-bulbs go off as you begin to understand what all the fuss is about. As a student, it’s often very, very tempting to try and apply some of these concepts that are new and exciting and do something with them. One of the easiest ways to do this is to build a startup that somehow implements or expands on the idea.
One of the great things about startups (and particularly software startups) is that it is so easy to get started. Getting started is simply a matter of beginning to think about a problem and solving it. All the legal stuff, company formation and other details, though important, don’t have to get in the way (and are not that hard). One of the biggest barriers to entrepreneurism is that initial leap of faith. And students seem reasonably capable of taking this leap on a frequent basis.
Summary Of My Point: If you’re a student or recent graduate, this is a great time to think about starting a company. Keep your mind open. See if you can find patterns in the problems that you’re seeing and try and find unique and compelling ways to solve problems people care about. It often is really that simple. A personal quote that I used in a presentation on entrepreneurism at MIT a few years ago: Starting a company is really, really easy…it’s the surviving and growing it that’s hard.
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