An unsettled entry-level technology job market, coupled with the growing ease of building a company using artificial intelligence (AI), is pushing more engineering students to consider entrepreneurship over the traditional campus placement route.
Faculty and investors at leading engineering institutions say they are seeing a sharp rise in students exploring startups, helped by easier access to capital, mentors and incubators.
The shift is particularly visible as AI is reducing the cost and manpower required to build technology products. A small team can now use AI tools across coding, research and product development, allowing students to attempt ventures that would earlier have required substantially larger teams.
AI Factor
“You don’t need an army to build something worthwhile anymore,” said Lakshmi Shankar, general partner at early-stage AI-focused VC firm Together Fund and visiting faculty at IIT Madras and Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. AI is allowing teams with a handful of people to focus intensely on a problem, while the technology is also creating a more level playing field for young entrepreneurs, he said.
Shankar said the change was evident in the response to his AI entrepreneurship course. The first cohort had around 40 students, rising to about 70 the next time. This year, although the class was capped at 50 students, the number of applicants could have supported two, three or even four times that intake, he said.
The week-long programme takes students through developing an idea, refining it and pitching it to investors, with participants eligible for a Rs 4 lakh cheque. The growing interest comes as students increasingly see entrepreneurship as a viable alternative to joining large technology companies.
At the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), associate professor Arindam Khan said he had observed a growing interest in entrepreneurship through his interactions with students. While it was difficult to quantify how many would eventually start companies, the interest was clearly visible, he said.
“The Indian startup ecosystem has matured significantly, with many recent success stories and much better access to funding, mentorship and incubation,” Khan said. Advances in AI, space technology, robotics, semiconductors and biotech were also giving young researchers opportunities to turn research into products, he added.
Campus Ecosystems
The expanding campus ecosystem is further lowering the barriers to starting up. IIT-Kanpur placement coordinator Vaibhav Itauriya said more students were founding companies and that funding from organisations on campus had become easier to access. The curriculum, too, was increasingly incorporating entrepreneurship, he said.
IIT Bombay has expanded its support through its Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) and IDEAS programme. Last year, SINE partnered with Groww to launch INV.ENT, a four-year programme that offers up to Rs 25 lakh in funding, mentorship and access to the institute’s alumni network.
The growing influence of AI is also blurring the distinction between conventional and AI startups. “It’s hard to say which startups can be distinguished as AI because every startup idea now integrates the technology,” Mahesh Naik, a fourth-year student at IIT Bombay, said.
The push for technological sovereignty is adding another dimension to the entrepreneurial interest. Shankar said students and researchers were increasingly recognising the need for India to build state-of-the-art AI models for Indian languages, images and video.
The change is also being aided by a more accepting attitude towards failure. “The culture now allows people to fail more, which gives founders more confidence,” Ashish Taneja, founding partner and CEO of deeptech fund GrowX Ventures, said.