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Entrepreneurship is clearly on the rise among students. A recent GUESS India report states that about 14% of students aspire to become entrepreneurs immediately after graduation, and about 31% of students want to start their own within five years.
Is there any formula for building a startup? Yes and no. Entrepreneurship is not an exact science and the variables are many, and uncertainty is real. But what we can do is provide directionality: some practical first steps that increase the chances of survival and success for student founders.
At NSRCEL, through the sector-agnostic Campus Founders Program (supported by GPS Renewables) for students and recent graduates, we have worked with 80+ enterprises and 120+ founders. Here are some initial steps that can bring structure to a student’s entrepreneurial journey.
1. Find the right problem
A problem is the ideal starting point. Even if you start with an “idea”, it’s worth digging deeper to identify and articulate the real problem you’re solving.
For example, ask some basic questions-
1. How big is the problem and how intense is the pain?
2. Who is facing this problem the most?
3. What existing ways is your target customer solving this today?
4. How often does the problem appear in their life or workflow?
The next question is: how do you uncover all this?
The answer is to immerse yourself in the customer’s world—take quick surveys to get direction, conduct in-depth interviews to understand motivations and context, and pay close attention to real user behavior. Some of the best insights come not from what people say, but from what they do: the measures they take, the tools they rely on, and the friction they tolerate.
There are also a number of tools and frameworks that can improve the depth and quality of this process – helping you ask better questions, recognize patterns faster, and turn observations into sharper insights.
2. Perform quick verification calculations
Once you’ve found a broad set of problem statements to solve, and some possible solutions to solve the problem, we need to verify true customer intent. Time and again, we see founders run “validation” surveys with friends and family. The intentions are good, but the sample is often biased—and the insights can be misleading. A strong sample should reflect your actual target customer and have enough diversity (as relevant) in terms of geography, age, education background, gender, and usage, so you’re not building on a skewed signal.
It is equally important to separate genuine traction signals from vanity metrics. Every number does not mean progress. Putting a like on a post, or someone saying “that’s a good idea” does not equate to a willingness to pay. An even stronger signal is when a potential customer is willing to invest real effort – time, money, data, reach or internal resources – to try your product. In other words, there is a big difference between interest and commitment.
3. Build Minimally
Once you’ve confirmed that there’s a real need for the solution you’re proposing, go for the bare minimum. This doesn’t mean “making a shabby product.” In fact, we call it a minimum viable product (MVP), and viable is the key word. This means building the smallest version of your solution that can test your riskiest assumption: whether people will use it, return to it, and pay for it – before you sink months into features.
For example, a global home-sharing marketplace started with an MVP that was just an apartment and an air mattress in the founders’ home. This helped them test a key hypothesis: would strangers really pay to stay in someone else’s home?
Then they did something that didn’t scale. Initially, they noticed that listings were not converting well because the photos were poor. So the founders went in person to take better photos for hosts – an extremely manual, practical solution to increasing bookings before building fancy product features.
Once you see traction, you can organize and scale what works.
4. Break the Idea Myth
An idea does not equal a startup. Many founders are hesitant to talk about their ideas, worried that someone might “steal” them. But an idea is only a starting point. The real difference between a “brilliant concept” and a venture is execution: can you turn it into something people actually use (and are willing to pay for)?
Furthermore, a startup does not grow in a silo. Sharing what you’re building with relevant people often increases your chances of success. It can open doors to networks and introductions, help you verify faster with potential clients, and uncover blind spots early.
5. Know yourself and your co-founder
In NSRCEL, “EL” stands for Entrepreneurial Learning. Our focus is not just on the startup, but on the entrepreneur behind it. In many ways, the founder and team are just as important, if not more important, than the idea.
So it is worth considering in advance: what are your strengths and weaknesses? Where can you take charge, and where do you need to build an ecosystem of support through co-founders, early team members, advisors or domain experts?
Additionally, it helps to ask deeper questions: Are you the right person (and team) to solve this problem? This fits the founder-market – your proximity to the problem, credibility with the customer, and unique insight or access that helps you execute faster than others. If you don’t have that fit yet, do you understand what it will take to intentionally create it – spending time in the client’s world, partnering with someone who has domain depth, or surrounding yourself with the right advisors and network?
For example, we often see student founders building in complex fields like spacetech. In such areas, the question is not simply “Is the product viable/good?” But it’s also “Can you reach the right buyer?” What does it take to build credibility and reach the right decision makers? What networks can you leverage—and what forums, conferences, and ecosystem events can accelerate access and learning?
to sum it up
These steps are iterative and overlapping in nature. What helps a founder in the beginning is to keep their eyes and ears to the ground, close to customers, and respond to real signals.
(The author is Gangotri V Naik AVP Idea Stage Entrepreneurship & Mentoring, NSRCEL. Views are personal.)
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