I just returned from IIM-A after talking to students on ” Is a Startup right for them” and “Investors & Business Plans”. Beerud , CTO of Webaroo and earlier founder of e-Lance was also there and spoke on ” Start up: What it takes”.
IIM – A is thinking of having a business plan competition with a difference where few shortlisted firms would present to a panel of seed stage investors and try and close a seed round. Sounds like a good idea. Let them know what you think. The organizers of the “Entre” club read venturewoods.
Reflecting as I returned ( lot of time to reflect as my flight was delayed) I felt that the time may be right for IIM – A and other management institutes to do a one year entrepreneurship course which gives a certification like an MBA. A large component would be getting your business of the ground. Comments ?
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thats a great idea, a course for alum, at a discount, with the promise of a biz plan competition.
With the hyped packages these days, even without the disc and competition, imagine all the alum that’ll want to come back if they can participate campus placements again 😉
Would love to personally get involved with both the business plan competition and entrepreneurship course — i think its precisely these kind of things that are required to kickstart the venture ecosystem
Rehan has a valid point in targeting people with experience. Can IIMA get its graduates from 1995-2001 batches to enroll into these activities?
Rehan,
Good point. IIM Calcutta has a one year executive program for young professionals/young managers and eighteen other programs in cooordination with Hughes where you spend only five days at the campus. 40 of the 50 three hour sessions are done via satellite at Hughes centers. There are 48 centers all over India. The course fee is Rs. 94000. The URL is http://www.iimcal.ac.in/edp/ldpCourseDtls.asp?courseid=epyp2006&tabno=2
“My thought is this should be a separate program where people who are admitted have a strong desire to become entrepreneurs or join start ups.”
A good idea for an evening course in city colleges.
Harvard has a nice course called the Owner Manager Program, which is for a stage II entreupreuners…something worth emulating in India. I remember Manu Chhabria had taken this course and he told me that it changed his whole perspective. Many of us start off “raring to go” and this back to school will help.
I think there are two kinds of people heading for B-Schools.
Majority of them would aim joining some top notch companies / I-Banks thro campus interviews. Hence entrepreneurial courses may not mean much to them.
The rest would like to go it alone or in combo with someone else on some entrepreneurial initiatives.
As regards the latter category, the natural entrepreneur in him is not basically risk averse and he’s raring to go. He’d rather hit the ground running than to waste yet another year to be locked down and pay for..!