On a Sunday
morning, eager teenagers got together in groups at a Matunga school to make
presentations. This was not a dry, academic session. The Class IX students were
competing to present their business plans before a jury. They talked
effortlessly about costing, marketing strategies and business plans and even
how they could sustain customer interest. Some groups presented models, others
brought out charts, made PowerPoint presentations and answered queries on
business plans. Cheered by enthusiastic parents and queried relentlessly by
their jury, the teenagers pitched their business plans like seasoned
entrepreneurs before investors.
There were some
interesting ideas around chocolate: One group wanted to start a restaurant
where people could learn to make chocolates from professionals; another wanted
to set up an online firm that would sell chocolates from around the world;
others wanted to make a chocolate perfume and chocolate-coated medicines.
“My father has
been a businessman for ages. But he never knew what costing was. And when I
explained it to him, he was surprised. I too could not believe I could
understand business mantras so easily,” says Henil Savla.
Vyom Gesar never
wanted to take up his father’s business as it would mean being away from his
family for long hours. After the workshop, he changed his mind. “I was going to
just rent out my father’s shop and do an engineering course. But, I now see options
opening up before me. Maybe I should invest in television programming. It would
mean a high initial investment but the long-term returns would be very good,”
he says.
In that sense,
the workshop had achieved what it set out to do — stoke the young students’
entrepreneurial spirit. Sushil Mungekar, the brain behind the workshops who
runs the city-based startup Enlearning, believes each of us is blessed with an
entrepreneurial spirit that needs to be nurtured instead of being crushed under
academics.
Irrespective of
the profession one takes up, the entrepreneurial spirit helps one grow, says
Mr. Mungekar, a chemical engineer with a Masters in Management. “An
entrepreneurial attitude also leads to focus, plan, and strategise. It’s not
about learning to earn money but a life skill that is helpful in your entire
life.”
In 2015, Mr.
Mungekar started Enlearning, which, according to him, provides “India’s first
structured learning curriculum and programmes to stimulate the spirit of
entrepreneurship in early teens.” Through games, fun activities, video-based
learning, quizzes, skill and business-plan competitions, real-life projects and
interactions with business mentors, students are taught to be ‘teenpreneurs’ or
job creators of the future.
Over 15 hours of
engagement, children from 10 to 17 years of age are taught to think through the
process of making and marketing simple, self-made items — like the chocolates.
They are systematically taken through opportunity identification, business
modelling, branding, sales and finally, how to make a pitch. Mr. Mungekar’s
team conducts workshops in schools over weekends or during activity periods.
He started out
with a seed capital of about ₹10
lakh from his savings but managed to find an angel investor who pumped in ₹50 lakh. Mr. Mungekar
aspires to reach out to a million students in the country by 2025 through a
team of independent facilitators. He plans to expand to Bengaluru and Delhi in
six months.
His own journey
into entrepreneurship is interesting: For 11 years, he worked in various Tata
Group companies, even heading Tata Motors Finance’s car finance division. But
an urge to start something on his own brought him to enterpreneurship. His
experience with acquisitions and mergers helped him with the basics of business.
He co-founded
Index Advisory, a HR consulting firm, where he continues to be a strategic
advisor. He has the same role in Arogya Finance, a healthcare financing company
he started. He also spearheaded Chamak, an on-demand laundry that got acquired
in November 2015.
Enlearning is
driven by a deep belief in his life’s mission. To him, tapping teenagers is
crucial before societal pressures crush their “spirit of individualistic
creativity”. “The Indian mentality does not encourage entrepreneurship among
children. Parents do not let their children fail. Fear of failure is so deeply
instilled that students are afraid to attempt new ideas,” he says.
Beena Nayaken,
principal of the Masjid Bundar unit of Orchids International School, a venue
for the workshops, agrees. “Though students learn about entrepreneurship in
school, most of them end up working for someone else. But here, kids have
created their own products and marketed them. The process helped students
understand what entrepreneurship is and what it is not.”
Shubadra Shenoy,
principal of Shishuvan English High School, another venue, says,
“Entrepreneurship is a critical skill that will stand students in good stead.
With the entrepreneurship modules, children get hands-on experience. Today, we
have a separate activity group for entrepreneurship akin to various other
activity clubs.”
Some parents too
are grateful for their children’s learnings. Dipti Bheda, who runs an insurance
business, wants her daughter Dhruvi Bheda, who is in Class IX, to start a
business. “My husband and I learnt the ropes way too late. It was nice to see
my daughter pick them up much earlier. I want to finance her if she has good
ideas.”
This is what Mr.
Mungekar hopes to achieve, in the long run. The entrepreneurial attitude, he
says, encourages out-of-the-box thinking and builds perseverance and
conviction. “It will equip students to create economic value for themselves and
the society and drive job creation.”
Source: THE HINDU-21st December,2017
