Relatively Easy Ways to Contribute to Entrepreneurial Empowerment among the Indian Youth Try to stretch yourself a tad in case you are desirous of turning an entrepreneurial mentor
By Rahul R •
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If you are an entrepreneur skilled at your trade and having excelled in it, or simply someone with a societal bent of mind waiting for the right opportunities to make it big in entrepreneurship, it is now worth noting that even empowering today's Indian youth to become entrepreneurs by themselves also counts as one among the "smart societal solutions' which you could resort to.
In this regard, empowerment is not necessarily restricted to offering trainings and placement incentives for budding entrepreneurs, but actually making the latter group independent as far as contributing to society through smart business models is concerned.
With empowerment through effective knowledge transfer resulting in independence being the criteria, Entrepreneur India lists three effective ways which make it relatively easier to empower today's new-gen budding entrepreneurs to contribute substantially through smart models. Check these steps, below:
Hackathons to ethically hack into ideas and knowledge
Hackathons, when held smartly, result in wholesome analysis of the smartness of solutions. These also potentially lead to the development of smarter aspects which could actually withstand the test of time when employed over the Indian societal scheme of things.
In case you are a veteran tech entrepreneur, desirous of mentoring others, the hackathon concept is potentially an ideal platform for you to begin.
"Financial services and technology start-ups will continue to be one of the largest job creators in 2018," informs Anuradha Bharat who is head of People Operations at Razorpay.
The takeaway here is the opportunities that hackathons in sectors like financial services and technology represent with respect to analyzing and filtering out the best talent available. This talent could then be groomed for the futuristic processes which would to make them ready to obtain mentorship (entrepreneurial nurturing) from you.
In summary, hackathons are seemingly an ideal way to build technology startups.
Smartly incubate "smart startups"
If you think that the Indian scheme of things is not up to the mark with respect to offering the growth impetus (incubation) to newer startups and ideas, you could set up dedicated incubation centres, and at the worst at least organize qualitative meetups wherein your support and mentorship is passed on to the newbie entrepreneurs looking at making it smart with respect to offering solutions through innovative business models.
"Accelerator and incubator programs ideally help a startup perform a reality check from a product-market fitment perspective. Plus helps the start-up learn and grow through connects with the larger ecosystem including other start-ups, investors, potential customers and the media," states Abhishek Purohit who is Co-Founder at Bengaluru-based Nanobi Analytics.
Here, the notable aspect is the investor connect, which you through your customized incubation (accelerator as well) programs could accord to the startup owners who mostly have ideas but fail to raise quality venture capital (VC) investment.
"With role models like Ratan Tata, Narayan Murthy, Sachin Bansal and Bhavish Aggarwal - as a society, we have always respected self-made men and women who have boldly challenged the existing norms and created breakthrough products/services, and more importantly, created enduring institutions," stated Ajay Batra who is Director at the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Bennett University.
Backup ideas with money
As the old saying goes, "Put your money where the idea is," it should not hurt you to financially back entrepreneurs with smart ideas and the ability to stand out from the crowd. Here, you could always sit with these entrepreneurs to figure out if such smart ideas would result in scalable businesses; whilst also offering guidance on making ventures scale.
""If they don't understand my questions around the idea on which they have been working every day then there is a problem," said Rahul Chowdhri who is Co-Founder and Partner at Stellaris Venture Capital. Chowdhri emphasizes on the need for appropriate ideation for entrepreneurs and recognize why the idea is important.
When this is established, it becomes relatively easy for you to take a call on whether or not to pump in capital to an idea. If you can see a connect here, back ventures to truly stand out in the crowded Indian segment and scheme of things. Of course, always take your share of the return on investment (ROI) out of such ventures.
