How 263 entrepreneurs accelerated their startup journey with UpGrad
The government of India wants to create 1 million entrepreneurs over the next 2–3 years, yes, it is a mammoth task, but with over 12 million new entrants into the job market annually and a current backlog of over 60 million unemployed professionals, the task isn’t just important, it is also critical for the country’s economic growth. To contribute towards encouraging entrepreneurship in India and helping entrepreneurs enter the market more prepared for the challenge they face, we at UpGrad launched our flagship Entrepreneurship Program in November 2015.
UpGrad Entrepreneurship Program is a 4-month intensive learning experience designed to provide relevant insights and framework for launching and scaling up a successful business. The program comprises of over 70 hours of online content that focusses on practical aspects such as case studies and business plans, real life insights from over 40 top entrepreneurs, and mentoring as well as networking opportunities through interactive offline sessions.
UpGrad was recently appointed by the government of India as the official education partner for the Start Up India Learning Program that will reach millions, but even well before that, the UpGrad Entrepreneurship program had seen significant reach over its 11-month journey. We have received over 25,000 queries and 5000 applications spread over our 3 batches. After a rigorous admissions process we have so far selected and trained 400 of the most driven entrepreneurs.
Intrigued by the success stories that our students were sharing with us, we recently reached out to our 263 graduates and recorded their feedback on the program’s impact. We measured the success of our program across 5 main areas.
1) Did we help the ideating entrepreneurs launch their ventures?
2) Could the existing start-ups improve their business model or launch new verticals?
3) How many of our start-ups scaled their revenues or decrease costs?
4) How many entrepreneurs did we help secure funding?
5) How did we contribute to strengthening our student’s professional network for partnerships, hiring and other opportunities?
We were extremely inspired to see the results and are glad to share the success of our students with you.
During the course of our 4-month program, the number of students who had successfully launched their ventures increased by 50%. While 88% of our students either improved upon or completely pivoted their business model for the better through UpGrad’s guidance, 48% launched a new product or service within 6 months of the program. We feel that a successful start-up is truly marked by its ability to keep growing in a sustainable manner and to that effect- 54% of our students were able to decrease their operational costs and over 30% of our entrepreneurs significantly improved their revenues. If there is any single most important support in start-up’s journey, it is undeniably the entrepreneur’s professional and personal network of people. We were happy to know that the program helped 46% of our students directly find new partnerships or business opportunities while 11% even met their co-founder or a core team member through UpGrad.
It is not an uncommon understanding that entrepreneurship is best learnt through experience and we found that it is in fact the do-and-learn format of our program that our students liked the most, with industry insights and mentorship being the close second. Overall 91% of our students strongly feel that UpGrad Entrepreneurship program has helped them succeed, while 75% believe that UpGrad accounted for more than half of the total support and guidance they had during their journey.
According to a NASSCOM report on the start-up ecosystem in 2015: India has close to 4,500 start-ups employing around 85,000 people across the country. With the government focused on creating millions of new entrepreneurs, one can only imagine the potential job creation and economic growth that can be achieved through such an endeavour. Currently, India is the third largest start-up hub in the world and with an increased focus on building this community and making it stronger, UpGrad is committed to the collective goal of helping India become the biggest start-up destination by 2020.
