BANGALORE: Sixteen students opted out of campus placements this year at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), up from three students in 2009 and seven in 2010.
Turning their backs on the Fortune 500 companies that line up at the institute’s doors, the students said they hoped to make their own fortune instead.
“We always dreamt of starting our own company,” says Gandharv Bakshi, one of the 16 who opted out of the placement saga this year.
Bakshi, alongwith his batchmates, Abhinav Jain and Nitin Singh Bhadauria, started Alitum Solutions, a business performance measurement company, while still in college. “IIMB started a programme for student-run companies wherein we got free office space on campus.
This helped us start our business and we got our first client last October itself,” explains Jain. With a modest investment of Rs 5 lakh, the company, into its sixth month of existence, has so far bagged four clients.
The three, none of whom has a family business background, say their investment is more than adequate to fuel their ambitions at the moment since consulting does not require heavy expenditure on infrastructure.
Their parents, they say, are apprehensive but supportive of their venture. Prof Kumar K, Director of the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at IIMB, attributes the students’ entrepreneurial spirit to a “conducive environment and better exposure for start-ups”.
Programmes like the one he runs help build up the students’ business sense, he adds. Kris Gopalakrishnan, CEO of Infosys, is equally encouraging of startups and says they “contribute to a vibrant economy”.
Consider the case of Vinod Kumar, who graduated from IIMB in 2007 and started working with Hindustan Unilever. “I liked my job but I always wanted to start a company,” he says. Kumar says his moment of ‘epiphany’ came when his mother asked him to marry and he thought, it was either “now or never”.
In February 2010, he and Ganesh Shankar, a batchmate from RVCE, Bangalore, and Ananth Kamath, an acquaintance, set up Seventh Sense Data Solutions to train corporates and students in soft skills through centres in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
Common wisdom suggests that one should not venture into a field where established players already exist. But Kumar says he and his partners were unfazed by competition from big players such as TIME, IMS, Dale Carnegie and Career Launcher whose turnover runs into several hundreds of crores.
Instead, he says, they reasoned that “there must be a market if big players are involved.” The company now employs 24 full-timers and 10 freelancers and has a market value of around Rs 2 crore.
Peprismine.com is another good example of young entrepreneurial spirit.
In a refreshing twist, this company—set up by twin brothers and their mother—sells customised clothing experiences.
Terming the venture a new-age company, Anuj Ramachandra, one of the three partners of the firm, says Peprismine “aims to provide made-forme clothing over the internet”.
The 28-year-old Anuj handles operations and management, while his twin Anup handles sales and marketing and their mother Girija Ramachandra, 56, handles customer care and procurement.
The twins studied telecommunications engineering at Atria Institute of Technology and later did an MBA programme at IIIT, Pune.
Studying over, both joined a business analysis firm and, later, a consultancy.
But the Peprismine idea existed even then; so, alongside their day jobs, the twins worked on creating the software for their future venture.
Their mother, who used to run a play school, also evinced interest in their undertaking and decided to join them after doing a course for entrepreneurship learning at IIMB. “With respect to men’s fashion, the existing options were either basic tailoring or readymade clothing.
The buffer zone between the two was expensive designerwear,” says Anuj.
Peprismine was born to give clients the choice of designing their own clothes at an affordable price, without having to go to a tailor or an apparel store.
“Just log on to our website and pick your choice of collar, colour, design, fit and other tailormade solutions and you’re sorted,” he explains.
Downplaying any major competition, Anuj says their main focus is on “IT professionals and corporates who have easy access to the Internet and may not have the time to go to a retailer.” Unwilling to reveal the company’s turnover, he says: “We get an average of 100-120 hits a day.” The fact that Peprismine follows a zero-inventory model and the non-existence of physical stores helps them cut costs, he adds.
Infosys’ Gopalakrishnan says he appreciates what start-ups contribute to the economy. “Breakthrough innovations are normally by start-ups. But such players need to explore new ideas and technologies. It’s disadvantageous to them to enter the market with a product or service that already exists.They can’t compete with established players,” he warns.
“But,” he adds, “it’s the small companies that employ 80 per cent of the work force.” More power to the entrepreneur, then.