THERE IS no doubt that Youth Entrepreneurship has enormous scope in India’s growth story. The youth have the ability to transform the present challenges into opportunities the country offers. Conducive business friendly environment contributes towards promotion of young entrepreneurs as a priority agenda. About 75 per cent of young enterprises in India are either 2nd or 3rd generation of business community, while only 25% are new entrants. The need of today is to create business friendly environment to unleash the true potential of Young Entrepreneurs in general and first generation entrepreneurs from all segments of society in particular.

A comprehensive campaign to raise the tempo of Entrepreneurship in India will necessarily need the concerted efforts of a number of individuals and agencies. Enhancing Entrepreneurship involves the community, family, academia, financial players, government, industry, and potential entrepreneurs themselves. Promoting Entrepreneurship means encouraging people to be self-reliant in taking economic decisions and creating wealth and employment. 

-Encourage a conducive business environment
-Ensure simplified startup processes
-Reduce corruption
-Encourage more seed funds and corporate players to provide start-up funding
-Ensure proper publicity and implementation of various promotional schemes and policies

Role of the Financial Community
-Banks must consider Entrepreneurship as a major business opportunity
-Explore innovative options such as collateral-free loan, venture debt, soft loans, etc., for start-ups
-Incentivize entrepreneurs to undertake ratings and information disclosures by linking cost of credit to ratings (where more holistic ideas of risk can be evolved)
-Encourage the setting up of special industrial and management consultancy departments in banks to address functional inadequacies and market gaps, as well as develop multi-dimensional skills and increased information flows to encourage entrepreneurial funding
-Implement significant policy initiatives, including relevant RBI recommendations which facilitate ease of credit flow to budding entrepreneurs

Role of Educational Institutions, R&D Centres & Business Incubation Centres
-Make Entrepreneurship a core subject in business schools
-Encourage student-led entrepreneurial activities through vibrant EDP Cell in campus with active stakeholder participation; encourage initiatives such as business plan contests (with angel/VC/private sector assistance by holding ‘Enterprise Melas'
-Set up Institutions-Industry Partnership Centres in campus to help create industry linkages, partnerships and supporting incubation activities
-Enable research organizations to invest through knowledge, positioning inventions and innovations as equity in the new enterprises
-Make incubation a core business proposition to trigger Entrepreneurship
Actively involve industry (other successful entrepreneurs, angels, VCs, banks, chambers of commerce, associations etc) as part of the social networks for mentoring, thereby supplementing the efforts of academics within the educational institutions

How can Chambers Help?
-Chambers need to go beyond mid-size and large companies to reach out to young entrepreneurs
-Scale up current initiatives on Entrepreneurship; coordinate across associations and networks, and beyond metropolitan cities and top educational institutions
-Create networks of Entrepreneurship initiatives that are being undertaken across the country
-Strengthen mentoring programmes for upcoming entrepreneurs and actively leverage networks with successful entrepreneurs

All stakeholders in the entrepreneurial eco-system need to work in unison to enhance entrepreneurship in the country without losing further time - else we may loose wonderful opportunity to make India an enterprising nation.