Report

On

ROLE OF BITS IN FOSTERING

ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP IN
TECHNICAL SECTOR

Submitted
To

Dr. Nilak Datta, Faculty

BITS-Pilani, K.K. Birla Goa Campus,
Goa - 403726

By

Akhilesh Siddhanti
Ananyo Rao
Harsh Patel
J Tanay
Manas Jha
Pujan Vakharia
Smith Sen
 CERTIFICATE

TO WHOMSOEVER IT MAY CONCERN

This is to certify that the following report entitled “ROLE OF BITS IN FOSTERING
ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP IN TECHNICAL SECTOR” has been
completed and submitted by:

Akhilesh Siddhanti
Ananyo Rao
Harsh Patel
Manas Jha
Pujan Vakharia
J Tanay
Smith Sen

as a part of Technical Report Writing project under the guidance of Dr. Nilak Datta.

SIGNATURE OF SUPERVISOR
(DR. NILAK DATTA)

DATE OF SUBMISSION:
November 14th , 2014
Acknowledgement

We sincerely thank Dr. Veeky Baths for sparing his precious time and
giving us valuable information which formed an integral part of our report.

We would also like to thank Sunit Jain (our senior), yourstory.com, Forbes
magazine, Mr. Phanindra Sama (interaction through mail questionnaires) ,
Mr. Shivkumar Ganeshan+, CEL, BITSAA and Quora.com for making our
report more informative and fruitful.

Last but not the least, we would like to thank our dear professor Dr. Nilak
Datta for giving us the freedom to choose a topic of our own choice and
giving directions to our project.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. INTRODUCTION TO ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP
1.2. CONCEPT OF STARTUPS

2. ENTREPRENURSHIP IN THE CURRENT MARKET

2.1. MARKET EXIGENCY
2.2. QUALITIES OF A SUCCESSFUL ENTREPRENUR

3. START-UP AND BITS

4. CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL LEADERSHIP

4.1. CURRENT PROJECTS RUN BY CEL
4.2. SAXENA PRE-SEED FUND

5. TECHNOLOGY BUSNIESS INCUBATOR

6. SUCCESS OF ENTREPRENEURIALS
6.1. REDBUS
6.2. EXOTEL
6.3. GREY-ORANGE ROBOTICS

7. OUTLOOK OF STUDENTS
7.1. BACKGROUND
7.2. TRENDS IN BITS PILANI STUDENTS
7.3. INTERVIEW : STARTIFY

8. PROBLEMS FACED BY THE BEGINNERS

9. CONCLUSIONS

10. RECOMMENDATIONS

Abstract

This report has attempted to study the Role of BITS Pilani in shaping up
entrepreneurs in the technological sector. Initially, the report begins by defining
entrepreneurial leadership and the major factors that segregates a successful
entrepreneur from an unsuccessful one. The report has also analyzed the business
model implemented by startups, and the primary problems that students in BITS Pilani
face while executing such business models.

A detailed study of the successful startups that have come out of BITS Pilani has been
conducted. These startups include Redbus, Exotel, Grey Orange Robotics and Pinchat.
The business model of these startups is analyzed to find out the role that was played by
BITS Pilani in their formation.

The report also studies the organizational structure of the various clubs and
organizations currently existing in BITS Pilani that promote entrepreneurial leadership
among the students. These clubs include the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership
and the Technology Business Incubator. The opinion of the students regarding the
working structure of these clubs is taken into account while framing recommendations
for the revamp of these clubs to increase the awareness among such students
regarding the activities conducted by such clubs.

The report also describes the current scenario of startups in BITS Pilani, and the events
and workshops that are conducted in the campus. Coalescence, a startup and
entrepreneurship conclave conducted in BITS Pilani, Goa campus is discussed. The
report also describes the Entrepreneurship in Residence program, a new initiative
that helps foster startups in their embryo stage.

A survey was conducted among the students to analyze their mindset and attitude
towards entrepreneurial leadership, and the results were tabulated. The results of the
questionnaire were analyzed to find the problems existing among the on-campus
students, and suitable recommendations were formed to tackle these problems.
Sunit Jain, a co-founder of Startify, was interviewed about his startup and his ideologies
of a successful entrepreneur. Startify is a technology incubator startup that was started
by the students of BITS Pilani, Goa Campus. The interview focused on the story of
Startify, the problems faced by any entrepreneur while starting up a venture, and the
techniques one can apply while facing such problems, such as bootstrapping and peer-
mentorship.

The report is concluded with recommendations that are collected through the entire
report, and the manner in which these recommendations can enhance entrepreneurial
thinking among the students.
 1. Introduction

1.1 Introduction To Entrepreneurial Leadership

Entrepreneurship is the process of starting a business or an organization, through

the development of a comprehensive business model. The primary goal of
entrepreneurship is to come up with new ideas and innovations to solve an existing
problem in any sector. The person responsible for starting up the business is referred to
as an entrepreneur. The primary tasks that are associated with an entrepreneur are:

 Developing a comprehensive business model

 Making the business model self sustainable
 Acquiring Human and other essential resources
 Being responsible for the success or the failure of the business

A business model describes the plan implemented by a business or an organization to

generate revenue and make a profit from operations. The profit is essential for any
business so as to make itself self sustainable and not dependant on outside resources.
Dependency on outside resources for a long time can lead any business into
depreciation. Creating the business model after coming up with the concept of the
business is one of the most essential tasks for any entrepreneur. It is the filter that
separates good entrepreneurs from bad entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurial Leaders have some specific leadership attributes. Entrepreneurial

Leadership is based on the ideology that the leader believes in self employment. These
entrepreneurial leaders may not be starting a business, but they apply their knowledge
as entrepreneurs to solve problems pertaining to different sectors long after they have
established their business. The primary attributes that make a leader an entrepreneurial
leader are:

 Taking initiative and playing a critical role in an organization rather than a

ceremonial role; energizing the people
 Demonstrating entrepreneurial creativity by searching for new
opportunities and pursuing them
 Taking risk by pursuing into new areas and strategic ventures
 Taking responsibility for the failures of their team

It can be noted here that the qualities of an entrepreneurial leader match the primary
tasks of an entrepreneur, thereby showing that these leaders show the mindset of an
entrepreneur even long after they have successfully established their business.
Entrepreneurship is not simply starting the business/organization, it also refers to the
sustenance and constant growth of the business/organization, for which these
entrepreneurial leaders are primarily responsible.

This report will analyze the role that Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences, Pilani
(referred to as BITS Pilani from here onwards) has played, and will continue to play in
creating such entrepreneurial leaders in the technical sector. BITS Pilani is a premier
institute of higher education, with campuses located in India and abroad. It offers
graduate and post-graduate degrees in the fields of Engineering and various life
sciences. For the scope of this report, technical sector refers to the sector that runs on
the development and distribution of technologically based goods and services. This
sector contains businesses revolving around the manufacture of electronics and
creation of software, computers or products related to information technology.

The report, in the next section, will talk about the need of good quality entrepreneurs
and entrepreneurial leaders in the current market, along with describing the qualities
that define a successful entrepreneur. The current market in India is at a tipping point
with the potential for a rapid economic outburst that can propel the country‟s economy in
the forward direction at a fast pace. India, at this point of time, has a vast collection of
untapped resources (both intellectual and physical). Entrepreneurial leaders have the
capability to maximize the utility of these resources, something that will be discussed in
detail in the next section.
This report will also analyze the facilities that are currently provided in BITS Pilani to
foster the growth of such entrepreneurial leaders. It will study the organizations and
student run bodies that currently function in BITS Pilani in the form of CEL (Center for
Entrepreneurial Leadership), TBI (Technology Business Incubator), and the role they
play in developing an entrepreneurial mindset in the students present on campus.

Start-Ups are one of the most common platforms for entrepreneurs to execute their
business models and other ideas. Essentially, a startup is a company or a temporary
organization that is designed to create and implement a scalable business model. An
entrepreneur is one of the most essential components of a startup due to his/her prior
knowledge on how to create business models and effective resource management
techniques. This report will analyze the role of startups in fostering entrepreneurial
leaders to propagate economic growth, and the role BITS Pilani has played in creating
such startup ventures. It will also perform case studies of some successful startups that
have emerged out of BITS Pilani, namely:

 Redbus, an online bus ticket booking platform

 Exotel, a cloud telephony product
 Grey Orange Robotics, a robotics manufacturing company
 Pinchat, a mobile application for location based communication

A questionnaire was circulated among the students of BITS Pilani, Goa Campus to
study the mindset of the students and their attitude towards entrepreneurship. A
detailed study of the survey will feature in the report along with an analysis of the
observed trends. An attempt will be made to study the problems that are being faced
by BITS Pilani students with respect to creating startups or learning entrepreneurial
strategies and principles. The report will also feature an interview with Sunit Jain, a
student of BITS Pilani and the founder of Startify, a startup to help entrepreneurs in their
embryo stages by providing mentors and other forms of guidance.

This report will also discuss the academic structure of BITS Pilani, and how it affects the
entrepreneurial thinking of students. It will talk about the courses that are currently
offered to the students that help them develop an entrepreneurial mindset, such as
Product Branding and Marketing, and Principles of Management, that provide the
students with management know-how to complement the technical knowledge they
receive as part of their curriculum.

As part of the conclusion, the report will recommend steps that can be taken to promote
the spirit of entrepreneurship among the students of BITS Pilani, and the benefits that
are associated with following the recommendations. The recommendations will include
an analysis of the current Practice School system, a concept unique to BITS Pilani, and
how it can be modified to inculcate entrepreneurial thinking among the students. It will
also discuss the avenues which can be implemented to incorporate entrepreneurship in
the curriculum followed by the students of BITS Pilani.

1.2 Concept of Startups

A startup is a company or a temporary organization that thrives to create and

implement a scalable business model based on a new idea or concept. Essentially, a
startup aims to solve a problem where the solution is not clear and obvious, and the
success of the venture is not guaranteed. Anybody who works at a startup essentially
applies the principles of entrepreneurship to make his business scalable and profit-
generating. The essential attributes of a startup that differentiate it from a fully fledged
company are:

 Low revenues
 Negligible Profits
 Lack of Self Sustenance
 Small workspace
 Small number of employees
 Exclusive top management

Generation of revenue and covering of expenses for the startup to function is one of the
primary roadblocks that any startup suffers. Initially, most startups fund themselves
through bootstrapping techniques. Bootstrapping refers to starting up a business
without any external capital. Most startups fund the development of their project through
internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses. Successful startups grow by
reinvesting in its own growth if bootstrapping costs are low and return on investment is
high.

Apart from initial capital, the other essentialities for any startup include a cohesive team
and a resourceful set of mentors. A mentor is an entrepreneur or educationist who has
prior experience in the field of setting up a business and has a strong network among
business circles. A mentor is necessary for any entrepreneur during his starting up
period, as a mentor provides a platform for validating the ideas and platforms that the
entrepreneur proposes. The primary purposes served by a mentor are:

 Idea Validation: Validating and Critiquing the ideas and models proposed by the
startup owners
 Funding Assistance: Providing the startup with methods of revenue generation,
and occasionally making small time investments
 Network Building: Assisting the startup owners in creating a strong network of
contacts among business and entrepreneurial circles
 Motivation: Keeping the startup owners motivated during times of stagnancy and
low revenue generations

A network is essential for any startup to thrive, as it provides the startup owners to
interact with successful business owners and get important comments and evaluations
of their startup. It also provides them with an opportunity to interact with and pitch their
ideas to seed funders and angel investors. These investors fund the startups they find
appealing and profit-worthy.

The presence of student bodies like CEL (Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership) and
TBI (Technology Business Incubator) in BITS Pilani ensures that students get an
opportunity to pitch their startups to other students and faculty members regularly. This
provides the startup owners an opportunity to find team members who can contribute to
their startup. The presence of peer-mentorship programs also ensures that the
students have senior year students as their mentors who can guide their startup and
ensure that they stay motivated towards their initiative.
BITS Pilani is highly rated among all institutes for having a very strong and
distinguished network of alumni, who are at positions of responsibility in fields like
Academics, Information and Technology, Government, among many others. This alumni
network is represented by the BITS Alumni Affairs (referred to as BITSAA from here
onwards). BITS Alumni Affairs Division, or the BITSAAD, is responsible for all
BITSAA activities in BITS Pilani, Goa Campus. BITSAAD, through various alumni talks
and workshops, helps students connect with successful businessmen who are BITS
Pilani alumni, thereby helping them expanding their network. The role of BITSAA in
influencing BITS Pilani students towards becoming resourceful entrepreneurs is
explained in further detailed in the coming sections.

During the initial phase of startup building, called the embryo period, the workforce at a
startup is often limited to just the founding members. In such cases, implementation of
the business model can become a cumbersome task simply because of the various
aspects of the model that require technical knowledge in diverse fields. Entrepreneurs
having a strong technical background in fields like technology, as well as sound
financial knowledge often have an edge over other entrepreneurs because of the
diversity of the tasks they can execute even with a small workforce during the embryo
period of startups. This report will study how BITS Pilani helps the

students develop an all-round technical knowledge that help them execute their
technical startups effectively.

This report will analyze the business models of successful startups that originated from
BITS Pilani, such as Redbus and Exotel. It will also focus on the facilities that are
provided and the facilities that can be furthered to promote students to start such
ventures on campus, so as to get an idea of how a business model is created and
implemented.
2.Entrepreneurship in the Current Market

2.1 Market Exigency

An entrepreneur is someone who starts a new business, incorporating innovative

changes to existing products, services, business models, and creating new markets. Yet
very few achieve that great aspiration of really driving economic, social, and
environmental changes on a global scale.

Global Requirement for entrepreneurial leadership:

Each time a new entrepreneur emerges, a new product or method is added to the
existing market. The small time entrepreneurs, especially, keep a constant flow of ideas
to the market. All of them, in the late Steve Jobs‟ words, “push the human race forward.”

May it be Bill Gates‟ Microsoft foundation of Mark Zuckerberg‟s Facebook networking,

or Asa Griggs Candler‟s cola company, they have all contributed to the global
development and lifestyle. All the successful entrepreneurs help to fulfil either of the two
things:

 solve certain problem of the society, or

 contribute with a new product to the society

Indian Entrepreneur scenario:

India in the global face of start-ups, has real back hand. In the present competitive
world, having a good start up idea is not sufficient to create a successful business. We
need to have some fundamental skills and facilities to be able to survive in the market
place.

India produces over 1 million graduates every year. However, less than 1000 of them
come up with a startup. However, this is not the case on the global scale. Infact a
statistical analysis shows that 62% of US based start-ups have Indian co-founders
(source: WorldStartupRpt report), clearly indicating that graduation in India is more job
oriented than entrepreneurship.

In India, very few are ready to give up the comfort and security provided by their cushy
jobs to become entrepreneurs. Hence, it becomes difficult for startups to attract and
retain quality talent – since people generally do not want to quit their jobs at larger
companies to go and work for a startup.

This clearly indicates a need for change in the current Indian UG courses so that India
also comes up with many start-ups. The migration of Indians to the industry as
employees has been quoted as „India is Made in China‟, as China has seen the most
number of successful start-ups in the present decade.
Study released by Startup Genome and Telefonica Digital reported:

“India could well be one of the toughest countries in the world for a startup to flourish.
Although it is one of the world’s fastest growing economies, India ranks 140th in the
world in nominal GDP per capita. However, being one of the biggest markets on earth
provides a foundation for a prospering startup scene.”

The start-up ecosystem in India faces a serious dearth of good mentoring and a support
system – India does not have a large pool of successful entrepreneurs who have built
successful companies from scratch, and are willing to mentor the next generation of
entrepreneurs. A lot of entrepreneurs are looking for good mentors – as opposed to
funding.
India is still lacking in a proper startup ecosystem to take full advantage of the
opportunities up for grabs today. Other than a limited number of top business schools in
the country, most educational institutions fail to provide the necessary support and
resources for their students to indulge in free-form thinking, and take up
entrepreneurship.

This issue can be taken care of if a lot of support is provided to the students in the initial
stages of the graduation itself.

2.2 QUALITIES TO BE DEVELOPED AS AN

ENTREPRENEUR

1. Communication skills:

Learning how to effectively communicate with others while choosing the right words
can literally make or break your growth in the marketplace. A successful entrepreneur
needs not only to be able to communicate with his/her employees but also with their
customers. In today‟s business world where every organisation has a tough competition for
their products and services, success is differenciated from failure on the basis the
presentational factors of the promoter.

One can know everything there is to know about their business, services, mission statement
and vision, but if they can‟t express it with the right words out in the marketplace, chances
are their growth will be very minimal. Being able to communicate not only makes us look
more confident but also promises a better customer promoter relationship.

One of the most valuable aspects of mastering the skill of communication is having the
ability to inspire ones employees. The best business owners out there know the importance
of finding the time to inspire their employees and help them see past the roadblocks and
setbacks that may be present in their lives, hence helping in the growth of the business.

thus all said, communication skills play a very vital role in creating a successful
entrepreneur. Hence we would like to suggest the inclusion of courses such as „effective
public speaking‟ and vocabulary courses to be included in our curriculum for students
wanting to pursue a entreprenual profession.

2. Management skills:

Being an entrepreneur means you are you own manager, as well as a manager of
others. Your skills need to be extensive in order for you to be successful. An entrepreneur
should be able to effectively manage people, a budget, operations and in some instances,
investors. This requires someone with a multi-tasking work style who can plan for both the
short- and long-term goals of his business.

A successful entrepreneur has management skills to accurately research his market and
develop a comprehensive, multi-year business plan. This includes accounting for growth
and development, taking on employees, financing operations and marketing and running or
overseeing the day-to-day business functions. This type of business planning includes the
ability to manage economic forecasting.

Currently BITS offers a 3 grade course called „Principles of Management‟ (MGTS F211) to
develop the entreprenual skills. However for students wanting to pursue a higher
entrepreneurship, they should also be provided with more management courses options.
The new courses should also focus on elements such as employee management, customer
management and sales management. These courses need not be added to the regular
curriculum, but be provided as a elective for students wanting to pursue entreprenurship.

3. Finance and Revenue Generation:

Any business’ growth is indicated by its financial growth. Similarly a successful businessman
is one who is financially secured. Whether it‟s paying employees, managing accounts
receivable or preparing for tax season, every small-business owner needs to have his or
her company‟s finances in check.

As quoted by Forbes magazine (Aug, 2013) :

“There are three ways for aspiring entrepreneurs to equip themselves

with the Financial expertise necessary to start and grow a business:
 1. You can limit yourself to a simple, slowly growing, cash-based
business so you do not need to develop Financial skills;
2. You can learn the Financial skills required of an entrepreneur “on
the job” through trial and error; or
3. You can acquire the basic skills through case-based learning,
practicing how to make difficult financial decisions, one step at a
time, in businesses of increasing complexity, in a way that mimics
how entrepreneurs learn in the real world through trial and error,
but at a much lower cost. ”

Business is cyclical, and surviving economic peaks and valleys depends on proper financial
planning. A proper approach for an entrepreneur would be to be able to understand the
liquidity needs, forecasting, budgeting and reviewing ones‟ progress and always having a
Key Performance Indicator.
Thus it is recommendable that courses in addition to „Principles of Economics‟ (ECON
F211) be introduced, with main focus on market analysis and budgeting as an elective
course.
4. Competitive analysis:

The competitive analysis is a statement of the business strategy and how it relates
to the competition. The purpose of the competitive analysis is to determine the strengths
and weaknesses of the competitors within your market, strategies that will provide you with
a distinct advantage, the barriers that can be developed in order to prevent competition
from entering your market, and any weaknesses that can be exploited within the product
development cycle.

This skill, although may not be possible to be developed through classroom training, can
be worked upon and promoted to interested students by giving them an exposure to the
current market so that they can analyse and get an experience of the current market. To
implement this, suggested techniques are practise schooling in which management along
with technical skills are imparted to the students are suggested.

5. Expertise:

To be a successful entrepreneur, one of the key factors is to have a complete know

how of the field. A strong technical foundation can take an entrepreneur to a completely
 new height. Hence, here is where role of an academic institution like BITS comes into play
for creating entreprenual leadership.

To implement the technical foundation of students, they should be allowed to do a lot of

field work so that they are given to face the practical difficulties of their respective sector of
advancement.

6. Teamwork:

Today, most business owners use a team approach to solve problems, generate
ideas and complete tasks. Team leader skills also need some type of organizational
skills, because every team member will need to have their own responsibility and
contribution to the work of the team.
3. Startups and BITS

The Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, an all-India institute for
higher education, has provided the highest quality technical education to students from
all over India admitted on the basis of merit. Its graduates are found throughout the
world in all areas of engineering, science and finance. BITS symbolises the maturing of
Indian technical ability and “can-do” entrepreneurial spirit, especially as derived from the
private sector.
BITS Pilani has been continuously making efforts in building an environment of
promoting creativity, inventiveness and innovation among the students through various
programmes linking students to industry, R&D labs and other academic institutes in
India and abroad. BITS Pilani has an extensive linkage with industry on a continuous
basis as a part of its Practice School Programme.

In 2003, BITS joined hands with Wadhwani Foundation to found the National
Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) triggering off the development of an integrated
approach to entrepreneurship development. The large, diverse and highly motivated
student body continued its initiatives with the help of its alumni and faculty advisors to
organise entrepreneurs‟ talks (which have now become institutionalised),
entrepreneurship simulation games, business plan competitions and an internship
program with entrepreneurial companies.

The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani in association with the
Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India has established a
Technology Business Incubator (TBI) in the area of Embedded Systems and VLSI
Design.

BITS has set up a Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) to give a specific boost
and emphasis to entrepreneurship development. TBI jointly with CEL shall promote
entrepreneurial leadership across all disciplines, facilitate entrepreneurial activity
amongst students, and invite entrepreneurs to use TBI services so as to develop end
products for commercialization.

CEL which started with 20 student members now has hundreds of them involved in its
activities.

BITS Pilani Entrepreneur in Residence program (EIR)

Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani has recently launched the
Entrepreneur in Residence program (EIR) to provide its students and interested faculty
with a unique opportunity to meet one-on-one with successful entrepreneurs. The
mentoring program is aimed at supporting an entrepreneurial ecosystem that is being
laid down by the University through teaching and applied research, setting up of
incubators on each campus, providing seed fund opportunities and IPR support
mechanisms to encourage innovation.
The objective of the Entrepreneur in Residence Programme is to provide students the
chance to learn best practices for starting a business and also, give them an insight into
specific industries or markets. The program is meant to be of special benefit for
students interested in innovation and start- ups. The program is open to all students
across the BITS Pilani campuses through the telepresence facility. The programme was
launched by BITS Pilani alumnus, Phanindra Sama, Co-Founder, Red Bus.

“Entrepreneur in Residence Programme is a wonderful opportunity for students to

engage with successful entrepreneurs. The university understands the need of creating
an entrepreneurial ecosystem for its students and it is with this understanding that we
have launched this initiative to provide practical learning opportunities that facilitates
interaction with experienced entrepreneurs, industry experts and venture capitalists to
gain insight and inspiration.”

- Prof. K.E Raman, Acting Director,K.K Birla Goa Campus, BITS Pilani

COALESCENCE: Supporting Entrepreneurship in Goa

In the recent years, Goa has emerged as a hotspot for entrepreneurs. Goans in general,
are very enthusiastic about starting up but do not have the resources or mentors to do.

They say that in India, you become an Engineer first, and then decide what you want to
do in your life. And starting-up happens to be one of those big things which one can
achieve. Supporting the spirit of entrepreneurship, the students of BITS Goa organized
an Entrepreneurship-Summit this weekend to address the issues faced by startup
enthusiasts in our states.

Coalescence, the first e-summit of Goa, was inaugurated keeping in mind all the
aspects of starting up.
Living by its tagline, Inspire, Ideate, innovate, Coalescence had several events which
targeted how people should start-up, the problems that they will face while doing so and
how to pitch their business idea.

To begin with, there was a live session, an interaction of the audience with few
experienced, seasonal entrepreneurs, branding & consultancy experts to clear the
myths about startups and entrepreneurship. Followed by workshops on the Basics of
Entrepreneurship, things where most people make mistakes normally.

Then there was the Business Plan competition, Novaia - a platform for participants to
meet like-minded enthusiasts, get facetime with thoughtful judges and learn new skills,
improve their mistakes and finally 'iterate' their product. The winners got Cash Prize
Money of over 1.4 lakhs. The organizers were successful in bringing together over 100
startup enthusiasts to take part in it, while venture capitalists, investors and few people
from incubators to judge it.

ACT 2.0

The highlight of the summit, was the conference ACT 2.0 which aimed to inspire people
by relating them with the journeys and hardships faced by various people in their fields.

A.C.T is a platform where people speak about their Life's journey! The challenges they
faced, how they struggled, moving against the World, Daring to ACT!

“We aim to create a dent on the 'Entrepreneurial Mindset' of our audience”, said the
Organizing Team.

Standing for Aspire, Create, transform, this edition of ACT featured an amazing lineup
of speakers who had struggled in life but finally made it big.

Dr. Pawan Agrawal, CEO of the Mumbai Dabbawalas association, spoke about how the
dabbawalas have mastered the logistics and supply chain management through their
four principles, namely, Work is Worship; Customer is GOD; No alternative to hard
work; Importance of human values.

“There are no excuses. Kaam karna hai to karna hai”, he quoted about their work ethics.
The co-founder of Blume Ventures, an India-focused seed stage fund, spoke about how
to exploit college resources and develop skillsets during the college life in order to
startup. He has a great amount of passion for College level startups and has been
playing a major role in helping the students get funded for the same at college level.

One of the speakers was Shreena Thakore, an undergraduate student from Brown
University who has started a viral campaign called No Country for Women. It fights
problems of gender based violence and discrimination and aims to change the
problematic attitude of the country towards women.” the problem of rape is not limited to
the act of rape”, Shreena said, while dispelling the various stereotypes about things that
are deemed as „woman-ish‟.

The Startup Guy, Vijay Anand - specially known to the Goans as the Co-Founder of The
Goa Project was amongst one of the speakers. After the event, he appreciated the
Organizing Team as well as the participants.

Meanwhile, comedian Biswa Kalyan Rath of the Pretentious movie Reviews fame,
struck a special chord with the audience as he related his journeys from graduating from
IIT to working in startups and finally ending in the comedy industry, all the while working
in an IT company. He explained in details the mistakes that he made during starting up
and advised the startup crowd,” The best way to learn is to make mistakes”.

On the other hand, innovator and architect Alok Shetty explained the importance of
adaptiveness and demonstrated his idea of the black box. The black box is the size of a
shipping container and opens up to become a 250 seater auditorium in just 3 hours with
the help of only three people. “Architecture today has to be deployable,low cost, all
inclusive as well as flexible" he said.

The evening was capped off by Rajat Tuli, the founder of Happily Unmarried explaining
the importance of product marketing and a performance by the indie-rock artist Prateek
Kuhad, who left the audience as well as the speakers in awe of his voice.

Though the speakers of the conference were from diverse areas, the primary aim was
to inspire the audience and make them realize that entrepreneurship knows no bounds
and isn‟t limited to a single field.
In Goa, CIBA and GITIC support local entrepreneurship ecosystem by helping startups
accelerate their growth by providing them funding, mentorship and incubation. With the
help of SeedFund, Villgro, TLabs, Bakfy, Team 24, Birla Sugar and Camelot resorts,
Coalescence proved to be a hugely enlightening event.

"After being successful at spreading the entrepreneurial culture and promoting it,
Coalescence plans to further help the new wave of aspiring entrepreneurs take a strong
step towards being the leaders of tomorrow."

Goa has a huge untapped potentials for entrepreneurs who can make it big in India and
abroad. This summit was just a small step in realizing that and putting Goa on the global
market in a different way altogether.
4. Center for Entrepreneurial
Leadership

The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) is the entrepreneurial

community of BITS Pilani which is aimed at creating leaders through entrepreneurial
thinking. CEL is recognized as a center for excellence at BITS and works towards
creating the right ecosystem for ideas to mature into successful ventures. To fulfill its
mandate, CEL has taken up many projects and initiatives to foster the spirit of
entrepreneurship on campus. Due to its consistent efforts in this regard, CEL is ranked
amongst the top entrepreneurship cells of the country.

The CEL center is one of the top 5 Centres of Entrepreneurship among Indian
Universities.It is one of the Centres for Excellence at BITS Pilani and also one of the
founders of National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN). The NEN, founded in 2002, is a
non-profit initiative by the Wadhwani Foundation enabling new and future entrepreneurs
to access events and resources, share ideas and content, organize and market
activities, and forge relationships across India and the world. The NEN was co-founded
by five of India's premier academic institutions: IIT Bombay, IIM Ahmedabad, S P Jain
Institute Bombay, Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB),
Bangalore and BITS Pilani.

The idea for CEL was seeded by the BITSAA Center for Entrepreneurship and Venture
Capital (CEVC), with the vision of promoting the spirit of entrepreneurial thinking among
the BITS student community. The students and the Institute shared this vision and came
together to set up the center. The concerted efforts of the students, alumni and faculty
resulted in the Centre (set up within a short span of 6 months) being named as one of
the top 5 centres of Entrepreneurship among Indian Universities . The start of the new
MBA program in BITS Pilani is expected to add more strength to centre.

CEL: Vision
To inspire BITSians to play a prominent role in leading diverse entrepreneurial activities
in the country and make a significant contribution in global entrepreneurial innovation.
CEL: Mission

To promote entrepreneurial thinking among the BITSian community and create

business leaders in all spheres of life.

CEL: Goals
 Sow the seeds of entrepreneurial leadership across all disciplines
 Facilitate entrepreneurial activity on campus
 Bridge the gap between industry and the academic curriculum
 Build a high-quality ecosystem on campus to support resource-strapped startup
ventures
 Facilitate commercialization of R&D efforts at BITS
 Inculcate the value of social responsibility in every BITSian.
CEL has a number of running projects at Pilani and Goa campus led by one student member.
Current projects run by CEL

1. Conquest
Conquest is BITS Pilani‟s International Startup Challenge completely organized by a
team of intrepid students. The belief in the product rather than the business plan is
something which makes Conquest stand apart from the rest. It explores and caters
every need of a startup - incubation opportunities, IP filing, expert mentoring and
networking sessions with Industry stalwarts, Angel investors and leading Venture
Capitalists.

Started in 2004 as a Business Plan Competition, Conquest went international in 2006

and since 2007, it started inviting successful entrepreneurs to share their insights.
Slowly but steadily, it started attracting attention with the exemplary performance of
startups that came out of the competition as winners.

The aim of Conquest is to evaluate the entrepreneurial abilities of the aspirants from
different backgrounds. The annual event is unique in the sense that it does not fit into
the perspective of a normal business quiz or a business plan competition. Instead it tries
to put the participants to the real test and is an exhibition of grit, consistency and
spontaneity mixed with risk mitigation abilities, making it a reflection of their leadership
qualities and the entrepreneurial element in them. Guest lectures, workshops and panel
discussions by corporate achievers become the highlight of the final event.

In 2008, Conquest 2005 winner Mobile Medics made a successful exit by getting
acquired by Piramal Healthcare. The new company was renamed Piramal e-Swasthya.
In the same year, Conquest 2006 winner iViz security raised $2.5 million of Series A
funding from IDG Ventures.

All 10 finalists of Conquest 2012 are successful registered ventures. PosterGully

(Finalist-Conquest 2012) got incubated at The Hatch and has scaled up to such a level
that it is a sponsor for this edition of Conquest.

Gharpay, the Conquest 2011 runner up, was funded by Sequoia Capital just after
months of starting up and is presently India's biggest doorstep cash payment solution.
2. Epsilon

Epsilon is the Intra-BITS Idea Competition organized by the Center for

Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS Pilani. The mission is to develop a startup-friendly
environment in the BITS‟s ecosystem, to discover new and upcoming entrepreneurs
within the campuses of BITS Pilani.Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS Pilani,
believes in empowering novice entrepreneurs by providing them with a platform to
interact and get mentored by industry leaders, seasoned investors, angel investors, top
brass of various companies etc.

The objective is to transform an individual to an entrepreneur by allowing him to work on

his idea and get mentorship from the right people. Over the past few years, Epsilon has
seen young, potential ideas turning into award-winning business plans and later
becoming successful start-ups.

The salient features of Epsilon are:-

 Opportunities to gain insights into the entrepreneurial process

 Develop a meaningful understanding of how to go about consolidating your idea into

a business plan and eventually building an enterprise.

 Mentorship from a pool of experienced entrepreneurs.

3. New Venture Creation course

It is a three unit course run on all campuses of BITS Pilani where students teams are
expected to create a product start-up at the end of the semester. The purpose of this
course is to not only study entrepreneurship but also practice it.

Student teams are expected to create a technology or product based start-up and write
a business plan including all the building blocks of creating an enterprise. In order to
create a successful start-up, student entrepreneurs will be required to address various
issues in start-up creation – product development, market research, technology viability,
fund raising, competitive analysis, team formation, marketing & sales strategy.

The course features guest-lectures from prestigious entrepreneurs, investors and

academicians with strong experience in creating and running start-ups. Participating
teams will be assigned an experienced entrepreneur mentor who will guide them
through the semester and beyond. The teams will compete with each other and the top
teams will be awarded seed funding to pursue the business idea for incubation after the
completion of the course and eventually launch the business.The best teams are
awarded pre-seed funding to pursue the startup further.
4. PRINT

Print is one of the most unique projects run by the Center for Entrepreneurial
Leadership. Through this project, CEL reaches out to all its stakeholders and fulfills one
of its most important objectives- to spread the spirit of entrepreneurship to the student
community and beyond.

In its new avatar, Print does this by bringing out two publications, Aspire and Imagine.

Imagine is the new e-magazine launched by the print team. The magazine was
digitalized to cater to the rapidly changing way in which people access information. The
theme behind Imagine is the power of ideas. It is ideas that drive the creative process
and we believe that innovation is the mother of all great change. Imagine attempts to
showcase some brilliant ideas in a reader friendly layout. We also try and get the
stalwarts from varied fields to share their experiences with us and present these to our
readers so that they can get inspired from these success stories.

Aspire is the annual magazine brought out by CEL. It contains writings about the
happenings from the world of entrepreneurship. It is basically an informative publication,
discussing the hot topics in entrepreneurship. In the past editions, we have got some of
the most successful entrepreneurs to write for us through Aspire.
5. Summer in a Start-up

The summer in a Start-up programme seeks to promote start-ups and encourage

entrepreneurial acumen amongst undergraduates. An initiative of The Center for
Entrepreneurial Leadership, BITS Pilani and powered by BITSAA, SiS aims to give the
students at BITS Pilani the opportunity to intern at a start-up over the summer.

The end-to-end objective for SiS and CEL are adding symbiotic value, to the start-up
and the intern. Considering the constraints of capital and infrastructure a start-ups deals
with, each team member is looked upon as an invaluable asset, responsible for robust
performance delivery in a start-up. Working in a company with an optimum head count
of less than 50, SiS interns have the opportunity to “be heard”, receive and share insight
and bring real action to the table.

Undergraduates (especially freshmen) presume their lack of technical skills will render
them ineligible for an internship. Though this holds for corporate firms and large
industries, there exists a plethora of start-ups for students to spend the summer
constructively. And those who do manage to intern at large corporate houses are
disappointed at their skills not being leveraged to the optimum; an inevitable
consequence of interning at a firm with thousands of underutilized talent.

SiS‟s track record so far reflects the success in meeting the objectives of the program-
“to provide students the opportunity to understand entrepreneurship hands-on, and
bring in new talent and fresh perspective to startups, besides a long term relationship
with an institute of BITS Pilani‟s Pedigree”.

SiS is affiliated to a number of startups for internships like Practo (online booking of
appointments with doctors), Gharpay (door-to-door cash collection for online deals),
Mobiotics,PPT Salon, Print Bindass, Ek SMS,CMO Axis,21 Fools, Yourstory.in,
Innomation, Awaaz De, B-Plan Experts, Samhita social ventures, Sutralite,
Framebench, Akosha, Sokrati, Zumbl.com and Ecolibrium Energy.

6. SocialWeYou

The specialized cell was created with focus on how businesses are moving from
'Interruption-based' marketing to 'relationship-based' conversations by connecting to
people who in-turn become evangelists of a brand. It is this stimulus which changes
mere brands to movements led by people. Social Media Cell was the first of its kind in
any entrepreneurship cell in India. While the usage of web tools remains indispensible,
Social Media Cell focuses on specialised verticals like Non-profits, Startups, e-
Governance and e-commerce The initiative is in its incubation stage.

7. Stimulus
.

 Preliminary Round:

This is an online round which is scheduled to be held sometime in late January

every year. Various dates are decided so that the contestants can choose dates
according to their own convenience. Finalists are decided on the basis of the
performance of the contestants in this round.

 The Grand Finals:

Scheduled to be held in BITS Pilani alongside Conquest. The successful

participants travel to Pilani to participate in the finals and compete for the grand
prize.

8. Student Consultancy
The Student Consultancy project at CEL is intended at harnessing the massive
untapped talent pool available amongst campus students, into incentivised work. Aiming
at providing end-to-end solutions to SMEs, ViMarsh channelizes freelancers in the
campus to an interface while simultaneously exposing them to the rigors of matching
the industry standards. Amongst its diversified verticals are included IT Solutions,
Environment and Ecosystem Management, Organizational Management, H.R.,
Marketing, Analytics and Optimization, et al.

9. TEDx BITS Pilani

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a set of global conferences owned by a
private non-profit organization – Sapling Foundation, working under the slogan “Ideas
worth spreading”. TED believes in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and
ultimately the world.

At a TED conference, the world‟s leading thinkers and doers are asked to give the talk
of their lives in 18 minutes or less. TED speakers have included Roger Ebert, Sheryl
Sandberg, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Gilbert, Benoit Mandelbrot, Philippe Starck, Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala, Brian Greene, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon
Brown.

TEDx was created to support independent organizers who want to create a TED-like
event in their community. At TEDx events, a screening of TED Talks videos- or a
combination of live presenters and TED Talks videos – sparks deep conversation and
connections at the local level. TEDx events are planned and coordinated independently,
under a free license granted by TED.

TEDxBITSGoa started five years ago, with the aim of spreading the ideals of TED in the
KK Birla Goa Campus, and consequently, Goa. TEDx BITSGoa is officially the oldest
TEDx event in country. The target is to impress upon a diverse audience about the
importance of innovation. It has grown in stature over the years and has featured people
such as Kiran Bedi, Kalki Koechlin, Clinton Cerejo and many others.
Saxena Pre-Seed Fund
The Saxena Foundation in association with BITS Spark initiated the Saxena Pre-Seed
Fund.

The goal of this Fund is to foster entrepreneurship amongst the BITSian community by
providing resources and expertise to student teams to practice venture creation. In
addition to investing small amounts of pre-seed money in BITSian student startups, this
Fund will also bring in expertise and mentorship to help selected student entrepreneur
teams learn the ropes and successfully kick-start their ventures.
5. Technology Business Incubator

The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani in association with
the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, has
established a Technology Business Incubator (TBI).The vision of TBI is “to inspire
BITSians to play a prominent role in leading diverse entrepreneurial activities in the
country and make a significant contribution in global entrepreneurial innovation.”

The Technology Business Incubator is an umbrella for promotion of entrepreneurship at

BITS Pilani. TBI administers a business incubator which provides support for promotion
of technology driven entrepreneurship. The aim is to promote innovation and
entrepreneurship by converting and translating technology ideas and innovation in
various disciplines of science and engineering into products, processes and services for
commercial exploitation and the benefit of society to accomplish its goal. It facilitates
incubation of new enterprises with innovative technologies by admitting them in TBI and
providing them physical, technical and networking supports and services.

TBI provides support to ventures that qualify as a nursery incubation project initiated by
one or more members of the academic staff, students and/or alumni of one of the BITS
or other premier institutes, or some other technology promotion agency with a view to
trying out a novel technological idea for upgradation to a commercial proposition and
setting up a technology business enterprise. It also provides support to technology-
based start-up company promoted by a First Generation Entrepreneur desirous of R&D
partnership with the Institute or company with a view to trying out a novel technological
idea for upgradation to a commercial proposition.

Companies started by TBI

TBI initially started with one startup in year 2005. Since then, a total of 22
startups have incubated out of which 17 startups have graduated till now. The IP being
created by them is mainly patents and copyrights. Some of the companies
incubated/incubating are:

Startup Ventures Launched:

 Corpus Labs – software solutions in inventory management, health services

 Habits – concept that promotes the culture of reading
 Bridle Information and Technology Solutions – schoolmate product and
developing other mobile application based products
 redBus – an online travel portal catering to bus ticket reservations
 Open Source Pilani – rural 30-seater BPO provides high quality low cost back
office services
 Sanat Technologies – development of modules of data storage appliances
attached to network
 Veta Beans Neural Solutions – provides neuropsychology solutions in HR
domain. Won Conquest 2008 and Eureka 2008 Business Plan competitions.
 Grey Orange – (founder Samay Kohli) – developing a robotics-based curriculum
in collaboration with ROBOTIS Inc for school students; to increase their interest
 in STEM related courses in CBSE/ICSE Schools. AcYut 3 wins a bronze medal
at Robogames 2k9, San Francisco.
 Parivartan – (founder Saurav Neel Patyal) – gets the dynamism and energy of
youth to the development of villages and engages initiatives at the grass root
level by treating the community where it works in as equal partners in
progress. Team won Goldman Sachs Leadership Award.
Companies Incubating:

 Sharp Edge – providing a technology platform for engineering students which

integrates the traditional chalk & talk method with smart classrooms based on
cognitive learning. Pen Tablets, i-pads and other gadgets are used as per the
institute‟s discretion.
 Tune Patrol – a social music discovery platform to promote independent music
artists. With Tune Patrol artists will be able to upload their songs onto the site
and let listeners explore and buy their songs in an engaging game-like
experience.
 SMARTEC – changes the manual identification system prevalent in the
education sector today with a digitalised system.
 KNOWLEDGE ASHRAM – develops an adaptive learning environment for all
where authors, teachers, students and learners can interact, socialise,
collaborate to create, share, publish, learn and explore.
 PhotoWalker – one-stop solution bridging the existing gaps in photography via
its website, phone app and offline models. The technology will help people in all
the 3 stages of photography – pre, during and post.
 Mi-Ti – an innovative sleek design with close to natural approach for typing &
writing on a tablet or on paper.
 CDS Solutions - developing an e-solutions content delivery model.

Selection criteria for startups

At TBI BITS Pilani, the proposals are invited and screened by a committee.The
teams are shortlisted and invited to present their proposals to the committee, where
they are evaluated on the basis of team strength, skills, commitment, determination,
market potential of their product/service, novelty/innovation involved, scalability, and
ability to come out with prototype to actual product/service.
Infrastructure provided to Incubatees

Upon admission to TBI , the infrastructural facilities offered to the incubate

companies are office space, internet connection, telephone lines, office space, Fax
machine,Printer,Photocopier,Scanner,Teleconferencing facilities, Meeting/Conference
room with projection equipment and Library.

If so desired by the incubatee, TBI will allow access to other departmental laboratories
and other resources of BITS, Pilani for their product development purposes. Faculty
mentoring is also provisioned as per desire of incubatee.

Support and Services provided to start ups

Apart from physical infrastructure, TBI provides certain other supports and
services which would include:

a) Corporate and legal assistance to the incubatee through internal assistance, BITSAA
or third party involvement.

b) Organizing events to help companies in networking and showcasing their

technologies.

c) Meetings with visitors of BITS, Pilani (such as alumni, VCs, industry

professionals).An incubate shall have an access to BITSAA technical network through
CEL.

e) TBI facilitates obtaining funds for the incubate companies at a post incubation phase
through a network of venture capitalists from all over India.
f) TBI has several links to the advertisement agencies all over India, which help the
companies at our centre to advertise themselves.

g) Tie-ups with chartered accountants and other professional organizations.

Apart from these, incubate companies shall have opportunity for getting:

1)Training in business communication: written as well as verbal

2)Training in business management: structured short courses

3) knowledge/ information site where management concepts, intellectual property

evaluations, company registrations etc are provided.

Comparison of TBI,BITS Pilani with TBI’s in

developed countries

The number of incubators per 1,000 population is much larger in the US followed
with China and least in India.

In China, the majority of incubators are government sponsored, non-profit

organisations. However in the US the model is more of private initiative to set up
incubators in universities or industry. In India, it is dominated by government support but
simultaneously there are incubators backed up by private sector.

Venture capital support system is well developed in the US while not as much in China.
In the Indian context too, VC and angel funding support is yet to develop fully.
Government funding in the initial stage of a venture by way of seed funding is easily
available in India as well as China but not so in the US.

Integration of research efforts to create intellectual property is much stronger in the US

followed with China, while it is yet to develop satisfactorily in India. A strong intellectual
property creation and commercialisation support exists in the US as well as China while
it is not so in India as yet. Investment on R&D has been around 1.7% of GDP in China
and just 0.7% in India while in the US it was as high as 2.5% which made a significant
difference in innovation and growth backed up by new ventures.
6. Success of Entrepreneurials

“I think it has to do with flexible systems at BITS Pilani that leads a lot of people
experimenting with their true passions and interests.”

-Aditya Rao, BITS Alumni

BITS has always been trying to provide the environment that supports an
entrepreneur. There are many BITS Alumni , running a successful start-up all over the
world. Most of which are from Pilani campus , followed by Goa Campus , followed by
Hydrabad Campus.

To name some of the successful startups , here is a list.

 Hotmail
 Redbus
 Onida
 Exotel
 Grey Orange Robotics
 Webify
 Value First
 GharPay
 Zivame
 Online Prasad
 Scripbox
 redBus
redBus is one of the successful start-ups by BITS Alumni Mr.Phanindra Saha.
Who was also selected by Endeavor as a high impact entrepreneur.
Businessworld voted him as one of the top five most promising entrepreneurs.

Members of group conducted an interview via mail questionnaire , following is an exert

concluded from the same.

An exert from Interview with Mr. Phanindra Sama

1. During your college days (BITS Pillani, EEE, 1998-2002) what kind of a
student were you? Was your primary focus on studies or were you actively
involved in extra curricular activities too? Were there any early signs of
entrepreneur to be?

When I joined BITS Pilani in 1998, I was rather shy and under confident, primarily
because I could not speak English very well. Most of my education back in my town in
Andhra Pradesh was in Telugu. However, during ragging I got introduced to a senior
who came from the same town and who sort of took to mentoring me.

Upon the advice of this senior I joined the photography club (known as Department of
Photography a.k.a DOPy) and was actively involved with it through out 4 years; I was
one of the most learned photographer on the campus and eventually became Head of
DOPy in my 4th year.

I did well in studies too. A strong foundation in 11th and 12th meant that first 2 years at
BITS Pilani were a breeze when it came to acads; so much so that 7 of us were known
as Bewars Gangon the campus – sort of happy go lucky folks who did not study hard
yet scored well. Eventually I graduated with a 9+ CGPA.
I believe my stint at DOPy taught me valuable lessons about human psychology and
leadership that help me a great deal even today. These lessons, taught in an informal
setting with no vested interests on part of the seniors who taught me these, are –

• As head of the club, I had to manage a team of 50 student volunteer who worked
for no pay. And in learning to engage and motivate them, I, for first time, learned
nuances of how the organization structure, the parts in a large system, work and the
whole equation became clear

• I learned that while it may be difficult for me to keep track of all 50 members, as a
leader my job would become easier if I could identify 4-5 key members in the group and
could influence them who in turn could influence all 50

• Finally, I learned that everyone behaves as per his or her interest, and unless I
could align his/her interest with my interests; it would not be possible for me to get work
out of the person. This lesson that all of us learn at some stage in our professional lives,
I learned during my stint with DOPy

2.During your Engineering, where did you do your internship, what

project/assignment did you work on, and how was the overall experience?

In BITS Pilani, one gets to do 2 internships. One at the end of 2nd year summers called
Practice School 1 (PS 1) and another 6 months long internship in your final year called
Practice School 2 (PS2)

I did my PS 1 with Apollo Hospital, Hyderabad. Strange as it may sound (what would an
Engineer do in a hospital?), the internship was a plan by the entire Bewars Gang to be
together in Hyderabad during the summer. However, I learned a lot during my
internship. It was the time when Apollo Hospital was going for ISO certification and I got
to spend 1 week each in every department right from billing, admissions, Operations
Theater, maintenance etc.. I realized there was such a huge system (there were 2
basements below hospital where large machines used to run producing Oxygen and
what not, along with a large maintenance staff, cafeteria etc.) supporting what may
seem a simple doctor-patient transaction.

I did my PS2 at ST Microelectronics in Noida where I worked on designing a Bluetooth

controller on ST‟s FPGA. It was also a great experience because ever since I joined
Engineering, I was very passionate about Electronics and wanted to work on a real
project and here I was surrounded by 1,200 people who lived and breathed Electronics.

Another interesting aspect of this internship was that later when I joined Texas
Instruments, I realized the cultural differences that exist between an European
organization (ST Microelectronics) and a US based organization (TI). In TI focus was
always on results while ST was more about Work Life balance – sort of one was
Capitalistic in nature and other wasSocialist – it helped me define the work culture at
redBus which I think is somewhere in between the two. We are people friendly but we
drive the results too.

3.You worked for ~3 years before starting up. Do you think having prior corporate
experience helps one in starting up? If yes, in what ways?

Oh yes, absolutely! I will give you a real life example.

Another friend of mine who stayed back at BITS Pilani for his Masters started his
company right after the college around the same time we did.While we at redBus
adopted an open office workspace design that we had seen at ST or TI where
everyone‟s cubicle was same size and type; my friend‟s office space design was more
hierarchical in nature. 25-30% of space was designated for a closed CEO‟s chamber
while remaining 12 developers were seated in 50-60% of left over space.

In a knowledge economy, where talent is a precious commodity, things as subtle as this

can make it difficult for you to hire and retain skilled employees. Which is what
happened with this friend of mine where he really struggled to attract talent to the team
and eventually had to close down. I believe this happened primarily because he had
never been to any office, perhaps other than his own uncle‟s and that lack of exposure
cost him dearly.

Also while working, you get exposed to so many other aspects of running a business
such as HR, Finance, leading and managing people, processes etc. – all of which come
very handy when you start on your own. For example, in TI despite it being an open
office, the payroll department was always a separate enclosure because people are not
really comfortable talking/negotiating their salaries in open. What may seem an obvious
now, may not be intuitive to someone without this experience. Hence, I always
recommend that one should gain some corporate exposure before starting up on own.
4. What is redBus‟s thought process on internships? Is it an integral part of your
talent acquisition strategy? If yes, in what ways? And if no, why not?

Internships at the moment are not core of our talent acquisition strategy. Primarily
because most of our hiring is lateral and partly because as a new business, there are so
many things being figured out that we really have not been able to develop a concrete
thought process and action plan around internships. We have hired interns in past but
the experience has not been very successful. For a successful internship, there is lot of
investment, in terms of time and effort, that an organization must make and we so far
have not managed it well.

One of the good projects that an IIM Indore intern did for us was financial modeling of
our daily/weekly cash flows which was supposed to help the company do a better job of
budgeting and estimating.
 EXOTEL
A Business Phone System from Cloud

Another Successful startup by BITS Alumni , Mr.Shivakumar Ganeshan

Exotel was started to solve a pain point – how do you manage calls and SMS-es
from customers without getting into the hassles of a full fledged call centre or having to
be bound to one phone? Our aim is to provide the flexibility and features of a call center
to Indian SME's. We believe that we're at the forefront of something big. Cloud
telephony is poised to change the way businesses function.

 Exotel is one of the top 14 startups to look out for in 2014

 Picked by Nasscom as one of the 10 promising tech startups
 Cloud telephony is here to stay!
 Mashable picks Exotel as one of the 10 startups to watch out for

Shivakumar Ganesan
CEO & Co Founder, Exotel

“We've been around since 2011 and we currently have about 600
customers across India. We‟re a high energy startup. We work out of a small office in
Bangalore, sit around a desk, go for coffee together, handle everything from routers to
disk failures to sales calls to customer setups. We‟re dreaming big, and growing fast. ”

Shivakumar Ganesan is the Co-Founder/CEO at Exotel, a business phone

system on the cloud targeting SMEs in India.

Prior to Exotel, he started, built, learnt and abandoned Roopit - a medium agnostic C2C
marketplace. As an entrepreneur bootstrapping his start-up, he had only two people
taking calls (one of them himself) and in the process he would miss a lot of calls. Each
call was an important lead that could make or break his idea and affect customer
satisfaction. He wanted a solution that would ensure he never missed a call and could
track all phone conversations. Not finding anything in the market that fit his
requirements, Shivku decided to build one instead. This led to a pivot and the rest will
hopefully be history.

An alumnus of BITS - Pilani, Shivku started his career at Yahoo! as an Intern. He went
on to write code for products like Yahoo Hotjobs, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Communities etc.
winning accolades and building long lasting friendships along the way. Shivku was
awarded the Yahoo Ratna (Best Employee Yahoo - India) in 2005 and 2007 and the
Yahoo Superstar (Best Employee Yahoo - Worldwide) in 2008. He has two patents in
web crawling technologies. He then joined Flipkart.com as VP - Products and
Technology, and started building their ERP system while helping hire the core
engineering team.

How Exotel came about , interesting openion by Vijay Sharma

After being immersed in building a product for our customers and working with
them everyday to improve it – we are happy to have taken that path. Say the founders.
Exotel was born out of a need of another SME to manage it‟s calls and messages
easily. This SME was a start-up being run by Shivku and it was called Roopit . Roopit
was a online marketplace to make meet buyers and sellers and a lot of it was run over
phone calls, SMS apart from the internet. I remember Shivku at NASSCOM Product
Conclave 2010 , in jeans and chappals running around like a real bootstrapping
entrepreneur would and he had 2 phones in his hand. He was not able to have a single
2 minute meaningful conversation with anyone (it seemed to me) because his +91
9916-ROOPIT number would keep ringing and each phone call was an important lead
for his company, he could not afford to miss a single call. He was doing what an
entrepreneur should – take care of his customers and that meant speaking to them over
the cellphone – so he did.
After a few months he got tired of missing calls. He would at an average get around 60-
80 calls a day (incoming – support based), and he sometimes would miss some of
them, and obviously that hurt his business.
He wanted 2 things every business wants:
1. Data of what and how many calls, and from where etc.
2. He wanted good uptime and be rest assured the calls would come and even if he
missed them he could track it.
A hacker from birth, he decided to build something that would not let him miss calls –
therefore he built Exotel‟s first version and then launched it at Unplugged with Ishwar .

At Exotel, Shivku along with his co-founders, Ishwar Sridharan (whom he met at
Yahoo), Siddharth Ramesh (who studied computer science with him at BITS Pilani) and
Vijay Sharma (whom he met at National Entrepreneurship Network) are looking to solve
telephone and SMS related pain points of small & medium enterprises in a scalable &
cost efficient manner.

Shivakumar Ganesan, Founder, Exotel shares the challenges of establishing Exotel and
growth potential of cloud telephony in India with Vishal Saxena

Exotel is an intelligent phone system. We give a number on which a company (or an

individual) can receive lots of calls & SMSes and Make lots of calls/SMSes all the same
time without have to invest in additional Infrastructure. We also give Sales, Marketing,
support tools, Business intelligence etc: All the things necessary for a company to run
their business intelligently over Phone calls & Messages.

How the idea of cloud telephony came to his mind

Shivkumar Ganeshan was looking for a voice/sms solution for his previous
startup, Roopit. Roopit was a C2C marketplace which had lots of interactivity over
phone calls & messages. Unfortunately, there was no solution in the market that fit my
requirements. Also, he needed a cost effective solution as it was a self funded startup.
So, he went ahead & built something on his own. Turns out, that a lot of other business
owners also needed that solution. So, he modified it & started selling to other
companies as Exotel.

The challenges faced by him establishing Exotel

Telephony is not as easy as building a web application. There was a steep

learning curve as Shivkumar Ganeshan did not have a telecom background. Telephony
also requires money to be spent on infrastructure. But a few of his friends joined me. All
of them are hackers & creating something new is what they enjoy the most. Eventually,
they figured the technology part out. Working with operators was/is hard. At various
stages, personal & life challenges would throw up. Doubts about whether they are doing
the right thing would often show up. Having friends like Ishwar & Sid in the team was
very helpful , Shivkumar Ganeshan says. They would always come back to re-assure
him. Establishing a company is a mind game.

Shivkumar‟s words for upcoming Entrepreneurs

Understand yourself , Who are you? What are you good at? What do you want to
do with your life? Loose your ego. Which means , you can be wrong & when you are,
say sorry & learn from it. Watch out for signs on whether people (customers) love what
you are building. If they are, persevere to death. If they are not, drop it right now.
Embrace the impossible. If there is a problem that cannot be solved, then jump into it
like there is no tomorrow. Entrepreneurship is about taking risks. About irrationality. But
investing is all about security & predictability. Which is not a surprise actually. If I were
to give you a crore, I would absolutely like to know what you are going to do with, when
I will get my money back & how much I will get back. Fund raising was all about
managing this paradox. I think most business problems are really creativity problems.
We don‟t have a choice but to conduct sales, marketing & our business in ways no one
else has done before. My goal is to ensure that my team has the right environment to
think. And when they do, dramatic results are a natural consequence. Right now, I see
this to be a 6.5 billion dollar industry. There are numerous pain points in tele-
communications. As long as we keep solving them well, sky is the only limit.

(source: http://www.venturefinance.in/shivakumar-ganesan-founder-exotel-
entrepreneurship-is-about-taking-risks.html#sthash.OOzjukoN.dpuf)
 Grey Orange Robotics

The startup, founded by BITS Pilani alumni Samay Kohli, 27 and Akash Gupta,
24 has been operating in the field of robotics for some time now and their products are
revolutionising warehouse management of many companies in the country

An Indian startup which builds robots that help online retailers automate their
warehouses has raised funding from New York-based investment firm Tiger Globaland
early-stage investor Blume Ventures.Their love for robotics, goes way back to their
college days. In 2007 Samay found and lead team AcYut, a humanoid robot developed
at the center for robotics at BITS Pilani, their alma mater. The duo travelled and took
part in various robotic competition, like RobOlympics and Robocup, around the world as
a part of this team.

After college the duo, turned down job offers from the US and decided to startup in the
robotics space and Grey Orange Robotics was founded in 2009. They started off as an
education and training company for robotics. One of their first workshop was conducted
at IIT-Bombay.

Soon after they also got into manufacturing white labeled products like medical devices,
RFID detectors and other such products for companies in the US and South Korea.
Samay and Akash realised that they were product people and this is not where they
saw themselves in the future.

Grey Orange Robotics received about Rs 54 crore in the round where two angel
investors Raju Reddy and Dileep Nath also participated, said a person with direct
knowledge of the developments.
7. Outlook of Students

7.1 Background

The students of BITS Pilani pursue graduate and post-graduate degrees in

engineering and sciences. The academic environment of BITS Pilani ensures that the
students having strong technical knowledge in their subject, along with fundamental
knowledge in other fields like management, social sciences and economics through
various open elective courses.

The students of BITS Pilani, Goa Campus currently pursue the following undergraduate
programs:

 Computer Science & Engineering

 Information Systems
 Electrical & Electronics Engineering
 Electronics & Instrumentation Engineering
 Mechanical Engineering
 Chemical Engineering
 Pharmacology
 Physics
 Chemistry
 Mathematics
 Economics
 Biology

Apart from these programs, the students are also eligible to pursue dual degree
programs, where they can choose any two degrees from the available programs,
starting from the second year. The students pursue three kinds of courses as part of
their program, namely core disciplinary courses, disciplinary elective courses, and
humanities elective courses. The core disciplinary courses help the students to
develop a strong background in the subject of their choice, which proves to be hugely
helpful while establishing a technical startup. Apart from the disciplinary courses, the
humanities elective courses provide an opportunity for students to take up courses to
complement their technical knowledge with management and entrepreneurship related
courses. Some of the humanities elective courses commonly picked up by students are:

 Product Branding and Marketing

 Creating and Leading Entrepreneurial Organization
 New Venture Creation
 Organizational Behaviour
 Principles of Management

Apart from academics, the students also form and are a part of various student led
clubs and organizations that help them enhance their entrepreneurial knowledge. Clubs
such as Wall Street Club help the students get an insight into how the financial market
works, and how to maximize the return on investment on the products and services
they make in their startups. Other clubs like Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership
and Technology Business Incubator also hold regular inductions and selection tests
for students so that they can learn the various aspects of entrepreneurship on the go,
and from their seniors and fellow batch mates.

7.2 Trends in BITS Pilani students

A survey was conducted among the students of BITS Pilani, Goa Campus regarding
their views on entrepreneurship and their current take on the issue. The questions were
mainly directed towards analyzing the thought process of students regarding setting up
their own ventures, and their knowledge of entrepreneurship related activities that are
carried out regularly in BITS Pilani, Goa Campus. The following issues were raised in
the questionnaire:
  Post Graduation Plan
 Idea Generation Methodology
 Work Culture
 Problem Solving Methodology
 On-Campus activities
 Entrepreneurial desire

Post Graduation Plan

BITS Pilani, being a technical institute, fosters the growth of engineers and
scientists, who later branch out into various careers. The respondents were asked about
the sector they would wish to work in after graduation. Following responses were
observed from the respondents:

After college, what sector do you see yourself working in?

50% of all respondents claimed that they will work in the Technological Sector after
graduation, the greatest in number. Apart from these, 30% of all respondents claimed
that they would work in the management sector. This clearly outlines that majority of the
students receiving technical education in the campus would prefer to work in the field of
Technology & Management, the 2 pillars for any major entrepreneurial venture in
India.

Idea Generation Methodology

The students were asked about the method they would prefer to come up with a topic
for a working science project, in case they are asked to make one. Following responses
were recorded by the respondents:

Suppose you are asked to make a working scientific model or a Physics project.
What would be a better topic/idea for you to work on?

56% of all respondents said that they would like to come up with their own idea, which
was more than three times the second most frequent response of going with a friend‟s
idea. This clearly highlights that the students of BITS Pilani, owing to their technical
background, would prefer choosing an idea for a new venture than looking it up from
another source. It also highlights the inquisitive nature of the students to pursue an
idea of their choice.

Work Culture

The students were asked about the most important aspect of their work culture, out of
the options given to them. These were the responses recorded:

Which aspect is most important to you as part of your work culture?

Only 10% of all respondents claimed that they would prefer getting directions from a
higher authority, compared to 47% of the respondents who said that they would like an
efficient team to work with them. 26% of respondents chose the ability to take decisions
for their company, clearly underlining a need of decision making power and
responsibility among the students.

Problem Solving Methodology

The respondents were given a situation where they were asked to think like the CEO of
a software company. They were asked to think of a strategy to increase product sales,
and the responses recorded were as follows:

Suppose that you are given a chance to be the CEO of a software company that
makes anti-virus systems for computers. What would be the first thing that you
will focus on to increase the product sales of your company?

Only 10% of all respondents said that they would give up the existing product and start
working on a new product. 90% of all respondents showed entrepreneurial thinking in
sticking with their business model and choosing a method to increase revenue through
sales. Out of the 90%, 44% of the respondents said that they would review complaints
of customers, implying that majority of students would prefer working on the feedback of
their customer to recover sales, thereby giving credibility to the customers as a major
stakeholder in their business.

On-Campus Activities

The respondents were asked various questions to analyze the level of awareness
among the students regarding activities conducted by entrepreneurial clubs and
organizations. They were asked about the initiatives that can be implemented by the
Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership to promote entrepreneurial leadership among
the students. The following responses were recorded:
Which of the following activities should the Centre for Entrepreneurial Leadership do to
promote entrepreneurship among students in the campus?

76% of all respondents believe that workshops and competitions, and 74% of all
respondents believe that video conferencing with owners of successful business
ventures are the best strategies that can be implemented to promote the spirit of
entrepreneurship among the students. Owners of business ventures can also act
as resourceful mentors to the students as they will get a chance to develop
connections with such people. It can also help entrepreneurs in their embryo
stage to expand their network of connections.

Online blog and discussion forum is considered by 47% of the students as an

effective method for promotion of entrepreneurship. It can also serve as a modus
operandi for students to interact with other students and faculty and can also
serve as a platform to pitch their idea.

The respondents were also asked about a recent workshop that was conducted
by the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership on the topic Idea to Execution. It was
a workshop that helped the participants to learn strategies and techniques to
develop a business model to execute their ideas and make a profit generating
company. The following responses indicate the level of awareness among the
students:
 Were you aware of the workshop recently conducted as part of Coalescence on
the topic „Idea to Execution‟? Did you attend the workshop?

44% of all respondents were not aware of the workshop, implying a severe lack of
awareness among the students. Out of the people who were aware of the workshop,
60% attended it, clearly underling the fact that students would prefer going to such
workshops and seminars in case they are made aware of it.

Practice School is one of the hallmarks of BITS Pilani, wherein students are given an
opportunity to experience the current market in real time, by working in premier
companies. They also have the option of choosing to take up a research project as part
of their practice school. The following question was asked to the students, along with an
added option of starting up a new venture during their practice school:

Out of the following options, which one would you prefer to take up during your
Practice School?

53% of all respondents said that they would like to work on a startup or a new
business initiative as part of their Practice School. This clearly indicates that the
students would prefer to have a revision of the current Practice School methodology to
include an option for setting up their own business ventures. This would provide the
students with an opportunity to learn how to develop scalable business models and how
to interpret those business models with financial constraints.
Entrepreneurial Desire

The students were asked whether they had thought about becoming a technology
entrepreneur prior to filling the survey and whether they would be interested it from then
onwards. The following responses were recorded by the respondents:

Had you ever thought about becoming a technology entrepreneur in the future?
Did you feel that this questionnaire raised your interest in the subject?

46% of all respondents claimed that they had already given thought to the idea of
becoming a technology entrepreneur, clearly indicating a prominent trend of
entrepreneurship among the students. Out of the students who previously hadn‟t
thought about becoming entrepreneurs, 69% of the remaining respondents said that
they were interested in pursuing entrepreneurship in future after giving thought to it.
This clearly reflects a lack of awareness among the students. Students can be
motivated to think about entrepreneurship by holding workshops and talks, and ensuring
prior awareness among the students.

7.3 Interview: Startify

Startify is a startup that was started by students from BITS Pilani, Goa Campus. The
startup aims to create a platform for students and other people to pitch their ideas and
business models to a whole network of students and business entrepreneurs, and in
return receive resourceful mentorship from the various people who are a part of the
Startify network. One of the founders, Sunit Jain, is a student pursuing Information
Systems at BITS Pilani Goa Campus. He was interviewed by the team on the story of
his startup and the qualities of a successful entrepreneur. Here are the excerpts from
the interview:

Manas: What is Startify? How did it begin?

Sunit: Startify is an online incubation and innovation platform. It provides everyone to

connect with a network of likeminded entrepreneurs and pitch their idea for validation,
discussion, and to find resourceful mentors. Initially, a friend of mine had an idea for
another startup, but he failed to execute it due lack of proper mentorship and guidance.
We began Startify as a consequence of that, to ensure that other people get decent
mentorship.

M: How did you fund your startup initially? Did your funding sources change at some
point of time?

S: Initially we bootstrapped, keeping strict regulations on the amounts we spent on

everything ranging from domain names to pizzas for all-night meetings. I feel that
bootstrapping is essential for any startup to grow during its initial pages, even though
the founders have to spend money from their own pockets. It also teaches you the value
of using your resources judiciously. At one point of time, the needs of the startup can‟t
be met by bootstrapping, and in that case funding and angel investment are the best
options to generate revenues. We, being an online platform, are considering using
advertising as a way to generate revenue. However, we have not yet reached the
saturation point, and our needs are being met by our bootstrapping funds.

M: How important do you think is networking for any entrepreneur to succeed in the
market? What are some of the ways in which BITS Pilani students can expand their
networks?
S: Networking is the most important aspect of any startup after revenue generation. It
helps the startup to find investors in the form of successful businessmen who find the
concept of the startup appealing. It also helps the startup owners to find resourceful
mentors who can help in validating the business model of the startup and keep the
startup owners motivated and focused on the idea they started out with. Networking can
be achieved by going to conclaves, making friends in entrepreneurial circles,
attending startup meets and securing successful businessmen and entrepreneurs as
mentors.

M: What are the initiatives that are currently being offered by BITS Pilani that helped in
the growth of your startup? What all can be done to improve these initiatives?

S: Technology Business Incubator is an interesting platform that gave us guidance

during the initial stages. Also, Product Branding and Marketing, an elective course,
helped us get an idea on how to market our product effectively. The course proved to be
path breaking for us, and provided us with the technical and management expertise to
execute our idea. I feel that the library resources aren‟t sufficient enough to help anyone
learn more about how to execute his startups. I also feel that more elective courses on
entrepreneurship can be introduced, and the TBI can be made more proactive and
student-friendly.

M: You mentioned that the library was short of resources on entrepreneurship and
startup management. What all resources and books did you access while researching
on this?

S: The books that we used in our research were Business Model Generation by Alex
Osterwalder, Lean Startup by Eric Ries and 0 to 1 by Peter Thiel. Such books can be
introduced in the Library, along with other startup related journals and magazines.

M: Apart from library reformation, what other avenues can be introduced to inculcate an
entrepreneurial mindset among the students?
S: Courses on Startup Engineering, Finance management and business model
development should be introduced for the students. A strong peer mentorship program
would also be really helpful for students to validate their innovative ideas and concepts.
Workshops and seminars with successful business venture owners should be taken up
by CEL and TBI to motivate the students to take up the field of entrepreneurship. I firmly
believe that entrepreneurship is one of the key aspects of the growth of the technology
sector in the coming years.
8. Problems faced by Beginners

With inference of the statistics that we got from students by questionnaire we

noticed that although BITS‟s many success stories and its rigorous effort for
encouraging entrepreneurial leaders there have been lapses as a part of institute .Also
there are many problems that generally people face in the beginner stage of being an
entrepreneur of which a student should be familiar.

Some lapses which we were able to sort out have been listed here.

Lack of Awareness

Most vital lapse is, there is a considerable communication gap between students
and institute as in one of the question we asked that if they had idea about workshop
recently conducted as part of Coalescence on the topic „Idea to Execution‟ and as a
reply we have seen that more than 50% answered people were unaware of this
workshop.

So there is a communication gap between students and institute or clubs under this
institute which are engaged in such activities. Thus if although some workshops are
conducted most of the students are unaware, all efforts are futile.

Startup or practice school

Another issue we came across was that when we asked if students wanted to
avail practice school or go for startup .Then many students answered that they would
prefer going on startup rather than practice school. But as no such opportunity is
available for students as a result many students go for practice school against their will
as a result they have not been so much successful as much they could have been.
Through interview of Veeky Baths, we came to know that during practice school
students interact with industrial people but this prevents many other students as first
year and second year students from interaction with industrial people as a result of
which many ideas which could have been executed are not executed.

Zero startup Capital

When students are about to begin a startup they do not have enough funding
rather they are unaware of amount of money to be invested for business. In fact they
are uncertain if their projects will be successful; as a result they are scrupulous in
investing in further ideas. Thus lack of funding pose a major problem in way of
beginning a startup.

Self doubt

Students often start working on an idea with lot of enthusiasm. But they soon
tend to start getting negative inputs from others and start to doubt the success of their
venture. This causes them to start losing interest in their project and eventually drop the
project.

Idea Chaos

In today‟s world, there is much more competition among people. Everyone has a
new creative idea. Hence there is tough competition among people for showcasing their
ideas. So there is a trend among people to put their ideas forward that is to establish a
start-up. People are growing with insecurity of discussing about their ideas with the fear
that others might use their idea for establishing their own startup. Thus most of the
people are unaware of the problems that they might face in their way for becoming an
entrepreneur. They are confused about the way they should proceed.

Generally people are not clear of the basic requirements of their startups. People come
up with many new ideas but they fail to execute their ideas properly. Hence although
they have brilliant ideas, they fail to succeed. If your business doesn‟t help people,
doesn‟t provide a solution, or doesn‟t give people something they want then your
business is shit and it will fail. Thus due to lack of mentorship, most of the people fail to
be a successful entrepreneur.

Lack of management skills:

Starting a company requires a group of people to work together to execute a

certain plan successfully. Thus a successful entrepreneur needs to have certain
management skills and some trustworthy people to begin with. This would not pose a
problem if a startup is initiated in college itself as it would be under the guidance of
some experienced people. Also failure would not affect, instead these failures would
improvise the qualities of an entrepreneur.

Finding customers is only a challenge if you don‟t have a good product or service. If you
have a good product or service then people will come to you, no need to spend
hundreds or thousands on advertising. At least not right away.

Usually when people begin with a startup, they need to publicise it through different
medias, but most of the people fail to proceed only because they lack proper advertising
of their idea. Customers are need to be familiar with the idea that an entrepreneur is
going to establish. As there have been instances of failures like Dvorak Keyboard which
was a simplified keyboard. but as people were unfamiliar with such a keyboard and
were comfortable with the traditional qwerty keyboard, the idea failed. Thus the only
reason is he was unable to convince people on his ideas.
9. Conclusion

Various aspects of this report were analyzed and studied in detail , and ,
conclusions were drawn as to the opportunities offer to the students by existing student
bodies and challenges faced by the students to implement their ideas and business
models. The conclusions are divided into following categories

 Business Models of Existing Startups

Through the Case Study of startups like Redbus , Exotel , Grey Orange
robotics , we can conclude that the success of any presence venture require
initial bootstrapping , constant motivation and guidance for effective
implementation of the idea , the success stories also show the role played by bits
in terms of providing strong technical knowledge , managerial skills and ability to
interact a network with variety of entrepreneurs .

 Questionnaire Analysis

Various Conclusions can be made by the analyzing of the questionnaire.

Majority of respondents stress that they would prefer taking up workshops
and competitions organized by cell to learn more about the techniques of
entrepreneurship. It can also be concluded that majority of students in
BITS Pilani displayed strong entrepreneurial thinking by not sacrificing the
current business model in case of growth and low profit .

Analysis also aims towards a lack of awareness among the students

regarding the activities conducted by the CEL , TBI and discusses the
methods to which this awareness can be dually raised.
 Interview Analysis

The interview of Phanindra sama , Co-founder of redbus , highlighted the

necessity of prior work experience to understand the complexities of
executing a business model and learning a business venture. He also
stated that starting up a venture from ground zero without any experience
can prove to be counter productive due to lack of management skills
regarding human resource and financial management. The interview of
Sunit Jain , co-founder of Startifier , highlighted the issues of insufficient
resources of the library and lack of responsiveness by TBI. He also talked
about the courses offered as electives in the academic curriculum that can
help a student develop his entrepreneurial skills.
 Problems and their Solutions

The students who opt for startup right from college seem to have lack of
exposure to an efficient system. This has led to the startup eventually
going down.

The report discussed the problems that are faced by a student in bits
pilani while starting up any new venture. One of the major problems
highlighted throughout the course of the report is lack of resourceful
mentorship. The report discussed how mentorship is an important aspect
for the growth of any start up as it provides a medium or idea validation
and acts as a motivational tool. An attempt is made to solve this problem
by creating a prior mentorship programs. Another problem that is faced by
the students is lack of courses such as startup engineering and product
branding and marketing for the students to expand their horizons. Lack of
awareness is also an issue that is observed among the students with
regard to facilities offered by CEL & TBI.

 Practice School Methodology

The report discussed about PS being an important aspect of the education

of students in BITS Pilani. However , the current system does not provide
sufficient opportunities for the exposure of students towards
entrepreneurial thinking. Through the questionnaire majority of the
students stated that they would prefer taking up a new business initiative
over an existing company as it would provide them with an opportunity to
take up position of responsibility and apply their technical knowledge
directly. Recommendations are made in the report to alter the PS System
to include entrepreneurial experience for the students.
10. Recommendations

After thorough research on the various aspects involved in startups in BITS ,

the following recommendations are proposed.

 Enhance peer mentorship program which will help to motivate and find flaws with
the ideas of the aspiring entrepreneurs.
 Regular guest lectures and workshops should be conducted by BITSAA , through
the ex-BITSians. Which will help to create a positive temperament in the minds of
the students.
 Live interaction or video conferencing with successful business ventures should
be encouraged so that the students come to know about the difficulties of the
current market.
 Support by BITS in major startups competitions across India conducted by
various organizations like Wipro , Infosys and Google should be encouraged.
 The questionnaire conducted showed that students prefered working on a self
created ventures in a practice school rather than on a thesis or technical sector.
This should also be considered for practice school.
 Library Sources should be increased with respect to entrepreneur resources
such as economic journals and databases.
 Regular workshops should be conducted to connect the students with ownes of
successful business ventures so that students can develop which can later on
help them to find resourceful mentors and angel investors.
 In practice schooling , along with technical skills , there should be exposure to
management techniques such as group management issues , problem tackling
methods. For example , Mr. Phanindrama Sama shares in his interview that the
prior job experience of 3 years at Texas Instruments exposed him to an efficient
system which he implemented in redBus.
Bibliography
 Book resources
o Forbes Magazine
o Zero to One by Peter Thiel
o Lean Startup by Eric Ries
o Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
 Internet Resources
o Yourstory.com
o Forbesonline.com
o Businessinsider.com
o BITSAA International Website
o CEL Official Website
o http://goo.gl/forms/o4NwnP2wAJ Questionnaire for Students of BITS Goa Campus