There Are Very Few Students Who Join B-School To Become An Entrepreneur: Dr Pooja Jain, Director, JIMS Rohini

The ‘Future of Management Education Conclave’ organized by BW Education provided a ‘Knowledge Disseminating and Networking’ forum for connecting the participants to each other, discussing today’s challenges & opportunities and shaping the future of business education in India.

The session titled, “Bridging Communication Gaps between Academia and Industry, Can there be a Y-Combinator Accelerator in an Indian B-School that can create Unicorns?” was chaired by Dr Debashis Sanyal, Director, Great Lakes Institute of Management. The other eminent speakers were: Dr Himadri Das, Director, IMI; Dr Pooja Jain, Director, JIMS Rohini; Dr Nagarajan Ramamoorthy, Director, IIM Amritsar; Dheeraj Sharma, Director IIM, Rohtak; Ashish Anand, CHRO, SAR Group of Companies.

Dr Debashis Sanyal in his opening statements said, “The only way to go forward is the digital mode. We need a technology-based and technology-powered education.”

On can B-Schools have Y-Combinator Accelerator, Dr Himadri Das said, “There are business schools and technology institutes in India which have incubators but nobody has an accelerator. Incubator is a more longer-term thing which has a setup where students along with faculties get incubated with their startup mode and they get space and they can stay for two to three years. Whereas an accelerator and if we take Y-Combinator as a benchmark, it's typically a three months immersion. We have Y-Combinators in India but not within an academic environment. B-Schools can have Y-Combinator Accelerators but the engagement will not be with industry.”

Talking further on the subject, Dr Nagarajan Ramamoorthy stated, “If we want to have this type of a model really successful, we would need to have greater synergy. For example, most of the companies are trying to shift their focus on the core competence and the curricular activity be outsourced. I don’t think big corporates would support this type of model.”

“There are very limited number of students who actually join a B-School to become an entrepreneur. There is a lack of combination between a management and a tech which lacks among students. So, I think it’s a good idea to get all the incubators, investors as well as faculties coming together and discussing,” asserted Dr Pooja Jain.

Ashish Anand, CHRO, SAR Group of Companies, underlined that students have the inclination to work in a startup but the ecosystem right now is not prepared. We need to work on that.”