B-School Incubators Aid Start-ups And MBA Students

In view of the spurt in start-ups across the world, Business Schools are vying with each other in setting up incubators to aid entrepreneurs as well as to impart training to MBA students intending to join the sector as an entrepreneur or as a key employee set to play a major role in the growth and success of the firm.

A start-up entrepreneur comes up with a bright idea, seeks and gets funding but now has to ensure its sustainability and success by assembling the right kind of team members able to take care of various aspects of the business. Top Business Schools are coming up with incubators and other programmes to help them as well as provide valuable lessons in various aspects of the business to their students.

In India, the focus on start ups as a sector fostering entrepreneurship and employment generation, saw investments touch $ 5 billion in 2015, according to the NASSCOM Start-up Ecosystem Report. Three or four start-ups were being set up almost on a daily basis. As many as 6000 such businesses have come up and the numbers were going up.

Hyderabad-based Indian School of Business (ISB), that came up with the ‘Startup First’ initiative in 2013 “to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem by connecting top talent with promising start-up ventures”, proposes to have ‘enterprise study machines’ that take up research and innovation on different areas.

ISB Dean Rajendra Srivastava recently told Business Line that while success of a good idea depends on a balanced team, among others, the School could tell them how to assemble the resources by providing tacit learning.

Apart from ISB, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta are some of the other B-Schools in India that provide advanced training and even access to funding for ideas that meet a prescribed criteria through incubation facilities.

Meanwhile, those MBA graduates intending to join Start-ups would do well to make sure that they are the ‘right fit’ candidates in attitude, experience and salary expectations. For those who expect to be given key positions along with staff members to take care of all the minor details, it would be quite a big let down. Start-ups, being in their infancy, would be sparsely staffed and almost everybody would have to perform pretty much all the functions.

Similarly, you may have worked in several of the top companies but the experience may not count for much in a Start-up. In such firms, more tasks would have to be performed with quarter of the resources available in a big company.

Thus, the candidates would have to convince the managers that they could comfortably fit into small teams and work to tight deadlines and high stakes. Your past record of finishing tough assignments on schedule or any such professional achievement could be highlighted. Domain knowledge or willingness to learn and adapt would also be essential.

Another factor would be salaries. It would be unrealistic to expect a pay that would enable you to repay student loans or money spent on MBA in a short time.

For those who intend to join a Start-up at the end of the MBA program, could gain valuable experience by opting for such a firm during summer internships in case of a 2-year program or for those about to complete the one-year course, spare a few hours in a week for such voluntary work at the Business School incubator.