SEAC (Student Entrepreneurship Advisory Council) Interaction
By: Roshan Rawal
Tags: Ecell, Startup, Students, Entrepreneurship, College

Challenges in student entrepreneurship

The main agenda of this meet up was to discuss the current scenario of the student entrepreneurship and challenges faced by students entrepreneurs. The best thing about this meetup was that here all participants were the representative of respective college’s E-cell coordinators and they all were well aware of all challenges and problems faced by students to jump into entrepreneurship. We found that challenges and problems vary from college to college. So if I combine them overall then some of them were lack of resources, not having mentorship, less awareness, low motivation, more academics pressure and many more. So we had a discussion about how to overcome these challenges and bring more students into entrepreneurship. Collectively we realize E-cell of every college play a crucial role in it and there should be a proper functioning of it.

Goals of E-cell

E-cells all around the country has taken up various initiatives to bring out the entrepreneurial flair in the students. But we have to answer how can we move closer to our objectives? In what manner shall an E-cell function? How does the student community perceive the identity of an E-cell?

The main objective of any E-cell is to aware of their college's students about the entrepreneurship and bring more students into startups culture so they can first learn how to do the startup. Representatives of E-cells shared how they are functioning their startup and what kind of activities are performing to move closer to our objectives. We come off several activities which create a great impact on students like Startup weekend, business plan competitions, Design entrepreneurship, Product development sessions, hands-on experience through visiting various locations and recognization of existing student entrepreneurs from their college to encourage them. At the same time, it’s very important to preserve the identity of E-cell as the most happening student body and for that, we should be well focused on the quality activities and events done by E-cell.

Sustainability of the E-Cell

E-cell is a student body so the execution team keeps changing. It’s very necessary and also challenging that new team stays focused on the goals and keep in mind the vision of E-cell.

In the solution of this problem, we all come off with the structure of our E-cell at respective college. Some of the colleges explained how senior-junior combination can make a great impact on the sustainability of the E-cell. In this model, there used to be a senior team who take care of the decision and planning part while the junior team takes care of the operation and execution part. That’s how juniors learn from seniors and replace them when they go out of the college. While some suggested about a core team can have senior and junior who take care of planning and decision part and below them there used to be execution team and volunteers. In this model, students get promoted on their performance basis not year wise. So both models were convenient as per college culture. Apart from that continuous mentoring, motivation, training and exposure of E-cell team also required for sustainable E-Cell.

Spreading Awareness

Having an E-cell isn’t enough awareness about E-cell and entrepreneurship is most challenging. We had to answer What resources can be provided to an aspiring entrepreneur? How do we communicate to the students the positives of starting a company? How do we encourage students to take up entrepreneurship?

To aware of E-cell and bring students once into entrepreneurship we can have an offline and online presence. We can create contest on social media to increase students engagement and offline awareness sessions to know more about entrepreneurship. We have to convey the message that not taking a risk in student life is the biggest risk and startup is a long time investment and student life is the best time to invest in it. We should appreciate and facilitate existing students entrepreneurs so they can inspire others and also get encouragement.

Collaboration

We at one platform also agreed that we all are good at something and lack at something. So, we can help each other a lot. We ready to collaborate in terms of knowledge sharing, information transfer, resources utilization, and student entrepreneurs exchange program.

Conclusion

In the end, it was a really great experience for me to interact with various brilliant minds across the country to discuss one of my favorite topic of entrepreneurship. I heartily appreciate the initiative taken by IIT Gandhinagar E-cell to bring various minds on one platform and have a healthy discussion on real problems of students entrepreneurs and their solutions by students. I am looking forward to impactful execution of it in all colleges E-cell to make a great startup ecosystem in colleges.