Why India Needs More Entrepreneurs with Right Educational Support The start-up and new-age businesses would contribute to employment generation

The world in 2017 is chaotic and a changed space. The advent of disruptive technology and innovation has harbored growth of entrepreneurship in the country. To maintain the momentum of new and innovative businesses and create business leaders, it's important to instill the culture of creativity and entrepreneurship in early childhood.

Promote Self-employment

The government has launched "Start-up India hub', a virtual platform for all entrepreneurs to connect and engage with each other, to strengthen the start-up ecosystem in the country, making it more crucial for the next generation to inculcate the skills and attitude of an entrepreneur.

With a population of over a billion plus opportunity creation for all will be difficult and hence it's important for policy makers to promote self-employment. This makes a strong case for introducing entrepreneurship and business management lessons in schools has become a need of the hour. More than 65% of India's population is under the age of 35 years, the demographic and growing digitization is an advantage to tap the growth potential of the country.

How Start-ups May Help in Employment Generation

The Indian startup system ecosystem is being led by Gen Z that strongly believes in inclusive growth. There are more than 3,100 startups (Source: NASSCOM 2016) and the number is expected to reach 10,000 by 2020 making India the largest incubator (after the US and China) of emerging startups.

India needs to create 10 million jobs every year to capitalize on the demographic advantage. The start-up and new-age businesses would contribute to employment generation.

Students be Exposed to Entrepreneurial Skills

The changing business and social environment in the country highlight the need for early exposure of students to entrepreneurial skills. In the age of artificial intelligence and with growing talent crisis, there is a rising need to develop creativity and innovative thinking from early childhood. Government should consider rewarding children for innovating new business ideas. Innovative competitions across schools would encourage youth to become entrepreneurs.

Role of Education Institutions

The role of educational institutions is to nurture an individual so that they can excel at problem solving. Schools should introduce subjects on entrepreneurship in syllabus. The skills required to become the first-mover comes from the ability to think innovatively and be creative. All this requires them to be trained in design thinking, problem solving and collaborating.

Early exposure to entrepreneurial skills helps students in honing a creative bent of mind that not only is beneficial for their development but for the economy as it has the potential of job creation. Therefore, the objective should be to offer unique and non-traditional formats that can empower students with the necessary skill-sets to become future leaders.

Schools should consider organizing entrepreneurship boot camps which would help students succeed at each level, i.e., from ideation to execution and ignite the creative spark in them. These activities provide students with an enriching experience wherein they actually pitch their ideas to real investors who may end up investing on a real time basis.

Some private schools are rolling STEM Classes, which is curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. STEM classes help students get engaged in different activities that push them to extremes of their thinking capabilities, and lead to astounding results and solutions.

Building future leaders that have the ability to be creative and innovative should be the outcome that all educational institutions should aim at and ensure the lesson plans are engaging enough to build students into future leaders.

There is need to introduce innovative and online learning modules in schools to encourage interactive learning. Digitizing education and encouraging creative evaluation standards instead of exam grading would help enhance overall personality of a student. Projects which would improve vocabulary, presentation skills and problem solving through data research needs to be introduced in our grading system.

The market today is much more competitive and our children cannot meet success without grit, intelligence and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. Instilling these values in children from an early age will give them a competitive advantage for years to come.

Entrepreneurs are essential to the future. Schools should be dedicated to training the next generation of global thinkers, it follows that cultivating the spirit of innovation -- along with the skills which support entrepreneurship -- among our students is a mission-critical endeavor.