Identifying and Mentoring Next Gen Entrepreneurs
By: The Education Growth Summit
Tags: Startup, Entrepreneurs, Education, Tegs, Youth

India is currently witnessing a boom in the start up space as there has been a huge influx of young entrepreneurs taking up initiatives using the digital platform. India has the advantage of a huge youth demographic and this gives our county a significant edge to develop industries and envision our future in a new light. The Digital India Programme has also given a huge impetus to this movement as the current administration is proactively encouraging new start ups to build their businesses.

But the biggest challenges in the surge of entrepreneurs is that it is still a largely unregulated space and a fairly new territory to tread on. This is where our education system could lend a helping hand and bridge the gap by providing some industry guidance and help students figure out how they could be the upcoming entrepreneurs of this generation. Educators must take the onus of fostering the spirit of entrepreneurship in students and train them to drive innovation that truly matters.

Our education system must orient itself in order to identify and counsel young entrepreneurial ideas. They must be given the required assistance and engagement with the idea of financing business and other functional aspects of leading their own initiatives. We have witnessed several fads like start up scheme rise up in the market, only to sink in a matter of months because these schemes were largely run by young individuals who had little to no experience when it came to consolidating their ideas and establishments.

Such ventures seem to start with a lot of vigour but at some point they start slacking away because the models used to new entrepreneurs seem efficient in the short term perspective, but in reality, they are largely unsustainable in the long run. Young entrepreneurs have a result oriented culture but they seem to not be able to make changes to their model as per the developments in their dynamic environment.

The educators of our country have an immense responsibility of spotting young talent and carefully nurturing their entrepreneurial spirit in order for them to become successful for a sustained future. A lot of startups lack consistency, they end up having a very mypoic vision of their potential thus mentors must guide fledgling entrepreneurs to see through this mental block of targets and also consult sources to ensure that they can grow from a long term perspective.

This calls for a need to have business mentors who could walk young entrepreneurs through the path of business. The initial process of setting up a start up would involve the ceaseless mission of roping in investors to fund their firms by way of the venture capital system but the obsession with this stage of the process makes them ignore the fact that they must also be investing and deciding to spend their valuable resources on the right kind of mentor. A Start up is a diverse space that makes up for a platform that requires different people with diverse agencies and expertise to join their hands together in helping build core business strategies for their companies.

More than 90% of start ups fail and the reason for this lies in the fact that amassing market share in a highly dynamic and competitive environment can be draining and time consuming if resources are not used optimally. Mentors who have spent a significant part of their lives in a particular area of interest can come of use to novice entrepreneurs who are interested in foraying into new spaces for businesses as they come with comprehensive knowledge about how the industry works and are better at predicting market trends. Mentors are indispensable for a startup as they give the necessary guidance to ensure that entrepreneurs take decisions smartly by keeping the scaling up perspective in mind.

New entrepreneurs can often delude themselves in the vicious circle of achieving targets and surpassing bigger milestones but its duty of a mentor to help them slow down and reevaluate things from a different angle. Sometimes, entrepreneurs resort to a very one dimensional way of thinking and this is where a mentor must intervene and encourage entrepreneurs to refocus their attention to other vital aspects of business.

Through a proper identification and mentorship curriculum, the next generation entrepreneurs can fuel the present market system with their ideas and truly drive change from an innovative point of view.

Written by: Kalyani Nair, TEGS