B-School grads choose to go solo as jobs go missing

Peerzada Abrar, Bangalore, August 17, 2009
The Economic Times
With the wait for jobs getting longer, the number of B-school graduates turning to start-ups is also increasing. A first-year student at IIM Bangalore launched a start-up called NextGen this year, which deals in clean technology.

NextGen recently bagged clean technology projects from the ministry of renewable energy and Yes Bank and companies like Intel, Infosys, MindTree, and now boasts of presence in Singapore and Portugal.

“There is a lot of pressure on companies to go green and reduce the carbon footprint. We are now working on a biogas plant based on food wastes to produce fuel. IISc is helping us in this and we are setting up a pilot project in BITS Pilani and on the Intel campus,” said the 22-year-old student. “Although the primary objective is to make money, there is also the need to create sustainable sources of energy for rural areas.”

Eximus, an entrepreneurship summit held in IIM Bangalore, which focussed on start-ups this year, saw around 1,500 registrations. Some 300 IIM students applied for business plans and some 25 venture capitalists showed interest to participate. Close to 120 IIM students applied to get live projects from start-ups, said Sabyasachi Senapati, senior co-ordinator, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Cell, and an IIM-B student.

Start-ups like 8KMiles are willing to give live projects dealing in cost-effective and secure outsourcing of software done online to prospective entrepreneurs while Justbooks, which promotes e-books, is willing to award projects to understand the impact of digitisation of music and film industry and draw parallels to digitisation of books.