IIM students take the 'enterprising' route

BANGALORE: Ghazala Tabassum just loves her tea. These days the exquisite varieties on offer at her ‘Just Tea’ outlet in the IIM-Lucknow campus have made her an instant celebrity among students. It helps that Tabassum, 27, is one among them - with three of her colleagues, she had started the vend specialising in imported and exotic tea-making almost a year ago. Tabassum will get her MBA in March, but she is more concerned about raising Rs 50 lakh to open branches of ‘Just Tea’ in other campuses.

Scratch the surface of the much-hyped placement season story, there are tens of Tabassums who have already found their life’s calling while in the campus. True to their education, they can spot business opportunities everywhere-recycling household waste, selling scented candles, or making solar lamps.

Creating a business out of every straw, literally, are students like Shalabh Agrawal (25) from IIM-Indore who plan to collect and dispose of solid wastes and recycle it through a venture he wishes to start with an investment of Rs 50 lakh- Rs 1 crore. “In India, municipal corporations cannot handle wastes well. We will focus on door-to-door collection,” Mr Agrawal says.
Making smoke-free candles from wax collected from bees, vegetables and soyabean is what Sumit Kumar Singh (29), from IIM-Lucknow is engaged in. He plans to scale up his family friend Nidhi Singh’s venture ‘My Sun Shine Candles’, which makes aromatic candles, with an investment of Rs 5-10 lakh this year.

And for students pursuing the post-graduate programme in management for executives (PGPX) and who already have a career in place, taking the plunge is proving to be more lucrative. Vishal Doshi (30), a PGPX student at IIM-Ahmedabad, plans to manufacture and supply wind turbine components in India with an investment of Rs 14 crore along with two partners studying at IIM-A.

Mr Doshi used to earn $200,000 per annum while working at Barclays Capital. “But I was tired of the corporate rat race and decided to be an entrepreneur,” he says.

Tapangshu Das (26), an IIM-Kozhikode student, has already drawn up plans to supply components made of natural rubber to automotive companies back home in Agartala with an investment of Rs 50-60 lakh. As for the funding, he says: “I expect to get support from angel investors and the Northeast Decision Sciences Institute.”

Many students like Kapil Jain of IIM Kozhikode will not join his classmates for final placements. He is busy working out details to start a business-to-business communication venture worth around Rs 40 lakh with funding from his family and hopes to incubate his company at the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad.

At the IIM-A, around eight to ten students have decided not to wait for campus placements this year. They plan to strike it out on their own with help from the incubation facility at their institute, says Kunal Upadhyay, CEO, Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM-A.

“We have been observing that most of the students want to start ventures in clean technology and IT,” says Mr Upadhyay.

The NSRCEL incubation cell of IIMB is partnering with Ennovent for the Global Energy and has come up with a competition for the best for-profit solution from India and elsewhere that can meet some critical energy needs of India. It will invest up to $500,000 in the winning enterprise. And the Connector who nominates the winning company also wins $3,000.

Family and angel investors, or high-net-worth individuals have been providing the capital necessary for these early stage companies, says Alok Mittal, managing director of early stage venture investor Canaan Partners India. “I think the academia at various management and technology institutes can play a great role by becoming angel investors themselves and help young students who want to become entrepreneurs”, he says.

Manu Avinash, second year student at IIM Lucknow, has started 2 web ventures in the past 2 years. Careers-India is a web portal for people looking for undergraduate and government jobs and prepares them through online examinations and consultancy. His other portal ‘Music Aloud’ is a joint venture with a few of the other students (Vipin Nair, Anirudh Patil, Naveen Srinivasan) at IIM Lucknow. Harman Singh along with three other students at IIM Lucknow, has started a food joint in the campus itself and plans to expand it into a full-fledged restaurant. Akhil Chugh, another second year student, is a co-founder of ‘StudyPlaces.com’ which is a web portal for students looking for admission in foreign universities.