The Start-Up World between IITs and IIMs

Is it necessary for a founder to be an alumnus of India's elite institutes, such as IIT's or IIMs? One way of analysing this question is by re-orienting it to look at the outcomes: "Will an education from an elite institution make me an elite founder?" Or, to consider another problem-solving paradigm: "Is a founder really a founder unless they have received the stamp and branding of these institutions?" Or a more accurate one: "What is it about becoming an entrepreneur that requires such credentials?"

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Prateek Maheshwari

The author is the co-founder of edtech platform Physics Wallah

In one word, it is the risk. Entrepreneurs and employees alike know the entrepreneurial journey-an every day, constant sense of risk that is calculated and sometimes audacious. Risk opens the doors to hitherto unexplored opportunity but it is all tempered with, and reality-checked by, the very real possibility of failure. One can mitigate, but not entirely eliminate, this risk through hands-on work experience and by developing the curiosity and perseverance that can be translated into momentum.

Challenge of Starting Up

When a start-up first faces the world, it is yet another idea in an ocean of ideas, with yet another product in a market landscape abundant with them. The challenge gains more texture when we consider the pro-business India we live in today, whose policies and robust economic performance are exciting the imaginations of start-ups in every corner of the country and venture capitalists from across the world.

Yet, start-ups are born, and they die in the blink of an eye. This sobering reality galvanises start-up founders to draw on their faculties and insight to go from zero to one. And it is in the ability to embrace these problems, the risks of not solving them, and then mobilising human and other resources accordingly that founders internalise and dimensionalise strategic thinking and a culture of innovation.