Challenges faced by Aspiring Student Entrepreneurs

Today‘s youth are keen to experiment and take risks. At present, many young fearless entrepreneurs have set the path for a wave of entrepreneurship in the country. This entrepreneurial spirit has resulted in not just innovation but also in entrepreneurship being recognized as the driving force of the market. Also, with government actively endorsing startups and small businesses, the wheel of entrepreneur-driven innovation has started rolling. It has been estimated that in order to accommodate the 300 million people who will join India's workforce between 2010 and 2040, India needs to create roughly 10 million jobs a year. This gap can‘t be filled by existing and large enterprises alone. Therefore, India must increase employment opportunities by not only forging partnerships with industries overseas, but also supporting and empowering its youth to start businesses. However, a growing entrepreneurship culture, a supportive new proactive government, and growing availability of financing, India, the world's biggest democracy, is poised for robust economic times. Biz2Credit has seen growing interest in the small business lending sector in recent months and optimism is growing, thanks to a new, pro-business government. An exploratory research was carried out at a university where start up ecosystem is present with the objective of studying the challenges faced by aspiring student entrepreneurs. An unstructured questionnaire with interview was conducted to understand the challenges they are facing. Certain recommendations are presented at the end of paper to facilitate set up of startup ecosystem in a new institute or university.