From Job Seekers to Job Creators:Why Indian Universities Must Teach Entrepreneurship as a Campus Habit
By Prof. Ujjwal Anu Chowdhury 05 January 2026
India’s campuses are expanding faster than the promise of stable, meaningful work. Degrees are multiplying, aspirations are rising, and yet the ladder into “viable jobs” is not growing at the same rate. Official estimates have placed the unemployment rate for youth aged 15–29 years at 10.2% in 2023–24, a reminder that the transition from education to employment remains uncertain for a large section of young Indians. Global assessments on India’s youth employment situation also underline the scale of the challenge and the need for better education-to-work pathways.
In this environment, entrepreneurship cannot be treated as a hobby for a few business-school students with family backing. It has to become a campus-wide way of learning—an applied, practical literacy that any student can pick up, regardless of discipline. The real value is not only in producing founders. It is in producing graduates who can spot problems, build solutions, test them with real users, price them responsibly, sell ethically, manage cash flows, hire teams, and scale what works—or shut it down intelligently and learn. This is the new baseline.
That is also the direction of national intent. India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 explicitly pushes higher education institutions towards research and innovation through start-up incubation centres, technology development centres, and stronger industry linkages. The Ministry of Education’s National Innovation and Startup Policy (2019) goes further, outlining how institutions should structure governance, infrastructure, intellectual property practices, and startup support as a system rather than a one-off initiative.
But policy text does not automatically become campus culture. What converts intent into outcomes is an operating model: leadership that signals permission to try, pedagogy that rewards building, and infrastructure that reduces early risk. The attached document argues for exactly this shift—moving from occasional entrepreneurship events to an integrated campus design that reliably produces new ventures and problem-solvers.
Entrepreneurship must stop living inside one departmentMost universities still treat entrepreneurship as if it belongs to management education. The result is predictable: students in law, media, design, agriculture, humanities, and the pure sciences either stay out or feel they do not “qualify” to build ventures. Yet the next wave of
Indian entrepreneurship is unlikely to be only tech startups. It will be a mix of sustainability businesses, local services, value-added agriculture, affordable healthcare solutions, creative economy ventures, education innovation, rural platforms, and compliance and logistics
services—domains where non-business students are often closer to the real problem.
The easiest reform is structural: entrepreneurship pathways must be visible to every student. This means entrepreneurship minors that cut across departments, credit-bearing venture projects that count toward graduation, and problem-solving studios where students learn to build solutions rather than write only examinations. A final-year venture project, properly supervised, can replace the traditional “project report” with something far more employable: a prototype, customer validation, early revenue, and a credible narrative of learning.
This is where global precedents matter, not as aspirational name- dropping but as proof of method. In places like MIT and Stanford, entrepreneurship is not a single course. It is a culture supported by multiple centres, programs, and long-term networks. Indian universities do not need to copy that scale immediately, but they do need to adopt the underlying idea: entrepreneurship must be normal on campus, not exotic.
The pedagogy that works begins outside the classroomEntrepreneurship is rarely learned through lectures alone. Students need ambiguity. They need field exposure. They need to attempt, fail, modify, and try again. The attached framework emphasizes “learning by building” as the default mode—problem-based learning where students
engage with real communities, institutions, and markets and then shape solutions through iteration.
Consider how different campus life becomes when a semester is organised around one neighbourhood or one district problem. A student team might work on waste segregation and discover that behaviour change is harder than technology. Another team might attempt a mobility solution and realise that operations and partnerships matter more than an app. A health innovation team might learn, within weeks, that trust and affordability are their first barriers, not engineering.
This is also where the idea of the “engaged university” becomes powerful, particularly for India and the broader Global South: universities cannot only chase commercialisation in the narrow sense; they must also build mission-driven innovations that solve social and environmental problems through local partnerships.
That approach is not charity. It is strategic, because India’s future venture opportunities will increasingly sit inside sustainability, inclusion, and public problem-solving.
An incubator is not a room; it is a repeatable systemMany campuses announce incubation centres with a ribbon-cutting, and then the room remains underused. The reason is simple: incubation is not furniture. It is a pipeline and a system. A functional entrepreneurship ecosystem includes pre-incubation for idea discovery, mentor networks, IP and legal support, prototyping facilities, seed grants, investor access, alumni support, and clear institutional policies.
India has strong examples of what “system” looks like. IIT Madras Incubation Cell, for instance, reported crossing the 500-startup milestone and has stated that it has incubated 511 startups with significant valuation and job creation figures, alongside a steady annual pipeline in FY 2024–25. This did not happen because one building was inaugurated. It happened because the ecosystem was built to run continuously: screening, mentoring, deep-tech support, and structured pathways to market.
IIT Bombay’s SINE offers another signal of maturity. In December 2025, IIT Bombay reported that SINE launched an incubator-linked deep tech VC fund (₹250 crore) to back early-stage deep-tech startups—an example of how campus incubation is moving into serious capital and commercialisation pathways. At IIM Ahmedabad, the entrepreneurship continuum (IIMA Ventures, formerly IIMA-CIIE) explicitly positions itself as a system that studies, educates, incubates, accelerates, and invests. At IIM Bangalore, NSRCEL has built a visible national brand in incubation and structured entrepreneurship programs, signalling how management institutions can anchor ecosystems that serve students and the broader society.
The point is not that every university must become an IIT or an IIM. The point is that every university can become a reliable entrepreneurship platform if it designs for repeatability rather than events.
Use what already exists: IIC and AIM are national scaffolding A common mistake is to assume that each institution must build everything from scratch. India has already created national scaffolding that campuses can leverage quickly. The Ministry of Education’s Institution’s Innovation Council (IIC) program, for example, is designed to conduct innovation, IPR, and entrepreneurship-related activities in a time-bound fashion, reward innovations, host workshops and interactions with entrepreneurs and investors, and build mentor pools and networks. When used seriously, IIC can become the campus operating system for innovation calendars rather than a compliance checkbox.
Similarly, the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM) has built the Atal Incubation Centre (AIC) network, and AIM itself reports scale indicators including the number of AICs and startups supported. For universities that are still building internal incubation capacity, partnering with nearby AICs is a practical bridge—especially for specialised lab access, early mentoring, and network credibility.
The national startup policy (2019) strengthens this message by framing entrepreneurship as an institutional responsibility, including governance structures, IP ownership, licensing, and equity-sharing mechanisms. Universities that implement these systems do not merely produce startup “stories.” They produce a steady pipeline of ventures, internships, live projects, and industry collaborations.
The invisible factor: psychological safety and leadership permissionEven with infrastructure, most students hesitate because entrepreneurship feels socially risky. They fear embarrassment, academic penalties, and the suspicion that entrepreneurship is a distraction from “real” education.
This is why the leadership signal matters. The attached framework argues for positive leadership as a core ingredient: university leaders must create psychological safety for risk-taking and make intelligent failure respectable.
In practical terms, this can mean flexible attendance and evaluation policies for active founders, formal leave-of-absence options that allow students to build ventures without losing their academic future, and public celebrations of attempts, not only of winners.
When leadership explicitly says, “Try,” student participation rises. When leadership says, “Only placements matter,” entrepreneurship becomes theatre.
Teach the craft, not only the motivation Many campuses run inspirational talks, pitch competitions, and startup weekends. These create energy. But energy alone does not build companies. What builds companies is craft.
Students need structured, step-by-step capability: customer discovery, market validation, pricing, sales, unit economics, compliance, contracts, hiring, and team leadership. The attached model emphasises skills training as a direct driver of entrepreneurial confidence and competence.
It also points to blended learning as the right delivery mode, because founders cannot always attend conventional schedules and because entrepreneurship knowledge is often best learned in short, tool-based modules. When universities deliver micro-credentials in these areas, hosted on the LMS and supported by hybrid mentoring, they make entrepreneurship learning accessible at scale. The output is not only startups; it is also better employability, because students learn how markets work in real time.
Change assessment, and students will change behaviourUniversities often say they value innovation, but they still grade students primarily through memory-based exams. That mismatch kills entrepreneurship learning. A serious reform is to change assessment design. The framework in the attached document calls for multi-assessment—grading authentic outputs like prototypes, portfolios, demonstrations, investor-style pitches, peer feedback, and iteration discipline.
When a demo day replaces an end-term exam in one course, the classroom becomes a studio. When students get academic credit for incubation milestones, they can justify venture-building time to families and peers.
This matters enormously in India, where social expectations around education are high and “wasting time” is a real fear. Reduce early risk: scholarships and micro-grants are not charity
For many students, the barrier is not ideas. It is the cost of risk. Even modest support can change outcomes because it buys time for validation and prototyping. The attached model treats scholarships and micro-grants as key enablers because they de-risk early exploration and validate entrepreneurial talent.
On campus, this can be structured as milestone-based prototype grants, founder scholarships that combine tuition support with mentoring obligations, and alumni-funded “student angel circles” that make the first cheque feel possible. The strongest versions of these programs are not open-ended. They are disciplined: small funding, clear deliverables, rigorous review, and strong mentoring.
Sustainability is not a side theme; it is a venture frontierIf universities want entrepreneurship to be relevant to India’s next decade, they should look closely at sustainability. Energy, water, waste, mobility, livelihoods, and climate-resilient infrastructure are not only public policy topics; they are business opportunities.
A powerful idea in the attached framework is “green infrastructure” as a campus lever: when a campus becomes a living lab—renewable energy monitoring, circular waste systems, water auditing, sustainable procurement—students get a real-world testbed for green ventures.
The university becomes the first customer, the first dataset, and the first validation site. That is how sustainable entrepreneurship becomes practical rather than rhetorical.
Interdisciplinary teams are where the real startups are bornMost successful ventures sit at intersections. Technology without design fails. Design without distribution fails. Distribution without compliance fails. Compliance without product-market fit fails.
The attached framework highlights interdisciplinary collaboration as a structural driver of innovation.
Universities can operationalise this through cross-school challenge labs, mixed-team venture courses, shared co-working spaces, and joint teaching where faculty from business, engineering, humanities, and design co-own outcomes.
This approach also strengthens campus employability, because interdisciplinary teamwork is exactly what modern organisations demand.
Measure what matters, and tell a stronger story than rankingsA final weakness across many universities is measurement. Rankings rarely capture the full value of entrepreneurship, especially social entrepreneurship and community innovation.
Campuses need their own dashboards: teams formed, prototypes built, ventures registered, revenue earned, jobs created, IP filed where relevant, grants won, follow- on funding secured, and measurable social or environmental outcomes. The attached model emphasises institutional “scaling up” through continuous improvement and outcome tracking, not through occasional publicity.
In a jobs-scarce era, the most credible university brand will be built not only on placement brochures, but on documented venture outcomes and community impact.
The editorial bottom line: the campus must become India’s most reliable launchpadIndia does not need every student to become a founder. But India does need every graduate to become venture-capable, because the economy increasingly rewards those who can create value, not only those who can seek roles.
The path is visible. Policy frameworks exist. National scaffolding exists through IIC and AIM. Indian examples show what is possible when ecosystems are designed as systems rather than events. The remaining work is cultural and operational: to embed entrepreneurship in curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, leadership signals, and campus infrastructure so that it becomes routine.
When that happens, universities stop being waiting rooms for jobs and start becoming factories of solutions. In a country as young and ambitious as India, that is not an optional upgrade. It is the next definition of what a university is for.
The author is the Chief Mentor of Edinbox and works as a Director with the Techno India group of Kolkata, along with being the Principal Adviser of the Kolkata based university of the group.
Source:
https://edinbox.com/index.php/editorial/7212-from-job-seekers-to-job-creators-why-indian-universities-must-teach-entrepreneurship-as-a-campus-habit
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