The one unmistakable buzzword that is doing the rounds in student circles these days is the ‘startup’. Young entrepreneurs are getting increasingly motivated to develop something of their own rather than work in the run-of-the-mill 9-to-5 office cubicles. So when it comes to spurring such bright minds on, not many people would be better than Dr. Partha Pratim Das, Head of the Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship (RMSoEE), IIT Kharagpur, who graced VGSoM as a part of the Vaarta’15 series of guest lectures.
Dr. Das, in his inimitable style, engaged with the students particularly well and delivered his talk in a rather jovial fashion. He started the session with a brief introduction about the Science and Technology Entrepreneurs Park (STEP) located in the IIT campus. STEP works towards providing a conducive environment wherein prospective entrepreneurs are nurtured and mentored towards realising the business goals that they carve for themselves.
He then went on to make the students aware of the substantial chances of failure that a startup entails. However, his mantra was that to become a successful entrepreneur in the long run, you need to go through a few jolts at the start of your career. He deemed failures to be learning experiences which go a long way in teaching the do’s and don’ts of heading a business idea. He mentioned about a couple of failed startups that he as a young student had got into. But he also reflected on how things have changed from that time and how the environment is more welcoming for today’s generation of students.
Talking of a welcoming environment, he mentioned about TIETS, standing for Technology Incubation & Entrepreneurship Training Society, which works in tandem with STEP to arrange for the incubatees an avenue where they get the fund support, mentoring, evaluation and prototype branding facilities. Dr. Das also put in a point about the Innovation Lab under RMSoEE which provides a viable ecosystem for research on various aspects of entrepreneurship like business intelligence and architecture, and technology interventions for venture creation, product development strategies and quality of services.
Some students in the audience voiced their questions about whether the entrepreneurship cell catered only to business ideas based on engineering and technology, in reply to which, Dr. Das clarified their doubts by assuring them that IIT Kharagpur being the multi-disciplinary school that it is, ideas from all domains are equally welcome.
He then concluded with citing some examples of successful startups which had their seeds at STEP in the IIT campus. There were a host of successful and thriving companies that he mentioned about, and these companies had operations ranging from providing technology solutions to relaying health information, from e-learning to e-travel, from digital pens to 3-D printing.
His presentation invited a plethora of queries from the audience, most common of which were regarding the approach needed to initiate a startup. He told in response that the only pre-requisite for building a startup was your ability to think and then to work upon what you think. After all, the rest of the things would fall into place when you have facilities like STEP and TIETS in your ambit.
– Article by Anshuman Mahanty- VGSoM, IIT Kharagpur