Venture Initiation Program Overview

That founder within just those six seven months created his first cohort of students and the school is live and his first like six months has led to a revenue of 17 18 lakhs. So that is what we're trying that how do you make the student the protagonist who is using all these skills that he's being taught inside the class and apply these to the outclass world where they are really learning business by doing business. I'm really excited to be doing this, Mahek. Thank you so much. Today we want to talk about the amazing VIP program, the Venture Initiation Program that Masters Union does to fuel future job creators in the ecosystem. It's very interesting that so many folks talk about creating an ecosystem for starting up, yet there are very few institutions doing this on a systematic basis, especially in India. And Masters Union is known to be an institution that creates startups that will build the entrepreneurial ecosystem. What's the genesis of the venture initiation program? So if you look at the vision of the founder Pratham Mittal, the vision was simple that how do you teach business by doing business, like the learn business by doing business is at the core of the pedagogy at Masters Union. Yeah. So what that means is there's actually two set of things that happen. One is in class and one is out class. Everything which is more academic, which is more learning in the classroom is called in class. It will include your things like product management, sales, operations, everything that you know a traditional business school would also have probably. Now what we've done differently or uniquely is that now imagine if you were a child what would you remember more like reading a book or watching a movie right and now imagine instead of watching the movie you're actually acting in the movie. Yeah. Your memory of acting in that movie would be so much more intense than you just having read it or even seen it for that matter depending on what kind of learning experience you like. So that is what we're trying that how do you make the student the protagonist who is using all these skills that he's being taught inside the class and apply these to the outclass world where they are really learning business by doing business so venture initiation program is a subset of the entire outclass ecosystem in outclass we also have drop shipping we also have create a challenge we also have live projects but venture initiation program initiated With a simple thought that today if we're talking about Adminirbhar Bharat, we're talking about how you know 10 million jobs have to be created in India. I don't think we're prepared for that as a country. And to be able to do that more and more startups need to come out. Right. That was the simple thought that how do we help these individuals who have entrepreneurial drive. Today like everybody is talking about Shark Tank and there's this aspiration that I also want to do. But how do you do it? How do you not feel lost about the process? And that's what we're trying to do through our venture initiation program. That if you want to be a founder today or three years later, five years later or 10 years later, those learnings will stay with you no matter what. I think starting up is just such a fundamentally transformative experience for any individual. And if an institution can help you de-risk that journey, because it's full of such amazing challenges, very diverse in nature. If an institution like Masters Union can help you de-risk that journey, help you through that journey, it can be really, really transforming. And we've seen that with the students this year. And it's been so gratifying to witness. The VIP program is also very daunting because, okay, building a startup is so challenging and so contextual, right? Like every startup requires a different journey. How do you build this YC meets, you know, institutional program? What do students have to go through, through the VIP program? I think first I'll say it's just incredibly hard to do it in a college ecosystem. Why? Because this is still a PG program where student is coming in with the expectation that they will be academics. They are coming in with the expectation that many of them have to go into placements. Which means there is already so much peer pressure about, oh aapki kitne ki naukri lagi. Right, there's always that sense of and for the people who also want to start up there's the sense of but my friend is getting a salary of 4 lakhs per month Right, which is not there for me and you don't know for how long it's not there. It's not like there's a dead headline to it, some of them might achieve product market fit sooner versus later. So we saw that early on, you know, that a lot of students really struggled with this balance to make that decision. Exactly. So one we, about the de-risking point, and then I'll come to the multiples. stages the thing that we introduced for this cohort for the first time the code of 24 which is graduating and you've been a mentor to so many of them is that we introduce something called founders fellowship now for founders fellowship it's as sweet a deal as we could have thought of when we have to offer it to our student every student who is in that thought that you know i think i've made enough progress through my venture initiation program in my startup and want to do startup full-time for the next six eight, nine, twelve, whatever number of months, Masters Union is sponsoring 50,000 rupees per month, per student, for them to be able to take that journey, to take that plan, so that they should not worry that how will the house run. And we have like 25 people who've actually opted in for the Founder Fellowship, opted out of placements. That's so commendable. It is incredible for me, sitting here as the director of the PG program, that there are actually 25 entrepreneurs out of a batch. of just 200 who are really going to take the plunge, do this full time and the deal gets sweeter that okay at any point of time where the student feels that okay I don't think it's going in the right direction or I don't have the fuel to you know keep running anymore or whatever that looks like, they can come back into the placement process along with the next cohort and still seek placement support from the campus. Lovely. So that's the de-risking part and which is probably why it has helped a lot of students to finally take that decision. Now, in terms of the multiple stages, we have four stages. The first one mandatory for all the students of Masters Union. Now, we know that while only 10-15% of the cohort will essentially do something entrepreneurial, we want 100% of them to build the entrepreneur's mindset. How do you hustle? How do you get revenue? Like don't sit in your ivory towers. And you know just think that it will happen automatically, it doesn't work like that. You have to really go on the ground, sell shamelessly, get revenue, identify that you know product market fit etc. So the first two stages is the pre-seed stage where they're trying to figure out what could be the right idea to work on. Now some students are coming in with the right idea or you know they have some idea of what they want to work on. There's some students who do not know where to start from. So this is the stage where they're really tinkering around speaking to friends identifying who who the right set of co-founders could be and then figuring out what's the right space what is a large unsolved problem and we're also telling them don't worry if someone wants to make a business make a business if someone wants to make a VC backable business make that so you have the option to choose between the two you can choose to build a bootstrap business lifestyle business and we are 100% good with that also so in the pre-seed stage you actually decide what the idea is going to be Now, in the second stage, which is the minimum viable product, you take that idea, find a scrappy solution to be able to take it to the market, to take it to your potential customers, to figure out what that customer base is going to be. From there, the third stage is how do you really go to the market? Because you've created this scrappy MVP, but till you go to the market, do this iterative process of, you know, getting the customer feedback, launching it, where do you want to launch it? Do you want to do B2B, B2C? Do you want to go to stores or do you want to do it online, etc.? So those decisions students start taking early on. So the third stage of the go-to-market strategy is optional. And the fourth stage, which is your suite PMF, which is what you're hoping for, the product market fit. So students are iterating on that product and process and hoping that they would have achieved product market fit. And that's like a continuous journey from there. So the last two stages, again, is optional. It's for people who are continuing on that founder journey. Yeah. And then after all of this is done, we do what you were saying about, you know, marrying the entire Y Combinator meets college space. We bring in 100 VCs, both early stage, late stage, etc. Who actually write checks for our students? The top 10-15 teams, they end up pitching to these 100 VCs in a single room. And Jivraj, you interact with VCs more than I do, I think. How much time do you think it would take for an individual to get those 100 meetings? I mean, three to six months at the least, sometimes a year, and maybe never because, you know, to get access to some of the names that came, and in one bulk and to create an impression, more importantly, just so magnanimous. I think most founders with a great pedigree with 20 plus years of experience also fail to sometimes get these meetings and that way it's very very appreciable what MU is able to achieve on that demo day. A couple of points there that I feel are helpful to also understand are throughout the startup building journey there are points like okay capital support right you need capital to continue and you probably can't raise with a scrappy idea at the start so what i find also very encouraging is the risk appetite that masters union shows right by ensuring that if a startup needs money for whatever reason as long as you justify the means and you provide the right uh proof of work you are actually getting that capital no questions asked and that's so so helpful and over a period of time i think deciding which market i think these foundational decisions can be crucial in your building journey and i've been at a position where in january we were discussing a food company, which eventually became a detergent company. We've gone through so many of these iterations. And I feel that is, again, very, very helpful, because I think so much of building a startup is avoiding mistakes than, you know, getting the right recipe for success. And so much of this external mentor support, brainstorming, having deadlines that help you iterate fast enough are helpful in the startup journey that may not be available to a general founder. And that is why I think the journey gets, it's never simple to build a company, but definitely de-risk from a capital mentorship support lens. And I think that's the best part of the progression. And we saw great numbers, I think even in the optional sort of phases, which were GTM and BMF, we had, I think, 30-35 startups on demo day 16 presented, there were two additional bootstrap businesses that presented so that's 18 startups you would find it very difficult to get like 18 startups on any campus let alone I mean, India, I think abroad as well. I'm sure you were at GSB, so you can speak more about that as well. Coming to maybe Demo Day, it'll be really helpful to start with maybe the impact that we saw this year, which is commendable, huge credit to the students. I think at Masters Union, other than the money that we've committed, like if I take 25 people and that's almost 5 lakh per year that we're committing. So that's a good 1.25 crore that Masters Union is earmarking for these startup founders. And that is all equity free. And other than that, we would have also given grants, like you were saying, so we had given at least 50 to 60 lakhs of grants across these four stages, all equity free, simply because these are our students. So that's the kind of madness that we have for people to actually create. And you've been a mentor with a lot of students, right? And you'd also brought in a lot of mentors who were industry specific mentors, like every single team that was building, they had an industry mentor, who could tell them that, you know, why was will this work versus not and it's not like they're saying that don't do this or do this but at least they'll give their experience of why this might work or might not and I think there's a lot of learning from that as well so I thought I'll just double click on both those points now in terms of the magnitude of demo day and before the demo day we also had this like you know small mbp fair where students you know put that fair that is so much energy on the campus I mean people have put their fairy lights and they brought in their product a lot of sale was happening on the on the spot also and they interacted with those mentors and you know got feedback and then these same students you know who had been interacting you'd been interacting with day in day out when they went on the stage for demo day and presented their final pitch i was like oh my god are these the same students like the confidence with which they presented the conviction with which they presented All of that to me was, I was just blown away. Like I was like, this is what I need. Now coming to the outcomes, because you know, ultimately, if the input is all right, you know, if you put the right set of hard work, you provided that ecosystem, you provided. mentorship then you would want and expect that some great outcome is coming absolutely so this year alone in a batch of 200 and for the 25 odd founders and that's going to be probably some eight nine teams in total we've had one term sheet which is like you know one point play super is going to be 1.3 million dollars yes like almost 10 crores it's uh it's like magnanimous you It's fantastic. Like in just seven months, you build that idea and you've raised funding of that order. So that's one that comes to mind. And then there are multiple people who've done angel rounds of 80 lakhs, 50 lakhs, etc. Yeah, Seedze is one another great example. They have a term sheet of 250k. That money is going to hit the bank. They are now looking at hiring people, building the product. They have this amazing demo that we witnessed through multiple demo days. You can bring those Seedze founders in this room right now. There's one day, I so vividly remember that and I'm sure you will have so many more memories of such things. Where both of them, they came to me and they're like, I don't understand, should I take this job? And I was like, absolutely not. Like because I could see what they're building. Absolutely. And I was like, this isn't the absolute right direction. Because they were saying that no, we're not able to pitch the story properly. The feedback from one of the VC was a little disheartening. So they felt like, maybe we're just not the right set of founders. But from there, they came such a long way. Like finally, I was like, you're going to send me weekly updates no matter what. No problem. Like just... Listen to me, I will make sure I refer you to my network. But the confidence change that they saw in that, Jivraj, I was so happy to see that transformation. It's so, so, so fulfilling. They have done fantastic as well. They're getting that 250K USD in their bank. And then there's one more team which got an offer for Acquihire. Yeah. To me that was also a great outcome, right? Like where another big company is telling that you are building this, I want to build this in my company. Why don't you come and build it within my company and I'm going to earmark some capital for it. It's really, really nice. So yeah, I think VIP Demo Day was so very fulfilling again because we saw these results. And again, the clarity with which the founders were pitching, right? You couldn't have like, you could be in any room and you would say that these founders have thought through what they've done. Then. execution was showing the effort was so evident right and they were as articulate as any other founder probably would be perhaps better than most out there and i was so so proud of the effort that everybody's put in so it was really great to see and that's the that's the output in my opinion right the fact that 16 startups were presenting as professionally as any other founder out there with great clarity on their business model if you can as an institution produce these outputs right they are bound to be successful how will life will tell right like some startups will fail more often than not they will right but the fact that they've been on this trajectory once enabled by the institution will only enable more and more such instances in their lives and lead to success in multiple terms i agree and one more example actually comes to mind when you're saying is that of of high school. Yeah. So that founder within just those six seven months created his first cohort of students and the school is live and His first like six months has led to a revenue of 17 Max yeah, and I'm I'm like a big fan of Atlas foods So so I'm like just waiting for the world to try their product one more. They've already gotten PR They've been covered by two of the newspaper articles etc also came out about them So again the conviction and you talk to Ishita and she'll say even now, it was then C5 orientation, she was there. She's like, I had also not thought that I can become a founder because I didn't see it in myself. MU made me see it that, you know, I too can do it. She would call me and she's like, I'm in Jalandhar right now. I'm at a factory right now. I'm figuring out production. Crazy hustle. Every time. Crazy hustle. Crazy. And that's the ground level impact. Somebody who was building eco-friendly solutions now building a B2B solution. That's pretty great. folks who did not get a chance to present. many of them are also now pursuing. Yes. That's so commendable as well. They realize that maybe they were not ready at that point, but they want to continue. And that is also really encouraging to see because they're not afraid of, you know, saying that, okay, we didn't do this in this timeline, but we did get enabled by so much of what we want to do. And that's also really nice. I think what I'm seeing, the fundamental shift, Jivraj, is that the student is asking himself or herself, ki ab nahi toh fir kab? You know, this is my one... time where the ecosystem in terms of finding the right mentors in terms of finding the right co-founders in terms of finding the right term like you know amount of money etc all of it is being served to me on a platter now if it doesn't happen now then it will happen someday correct correct so that mindset shift because i was also surprised by these people who didn't present on the demo day but still they're continuing correct and from so many unconventional backgrounds like there's a student who's a CA ranker yeah for three months was doing something else then three months something else they ranked top five on demo day and now he's pursuing this he's taken the founder fellowship and i remember like three months back he was asking me about jobs i was like why and then suddenly everything turns around and so much of by the way what he attributed is like hey we ranked on demo day and that's boosted my confidence to be like i can build a business yeah and that's so encouraging again and that was completely by virtue of you know everybody voting for it and in fact he was telling me today there are religious travel companies Shri Shardana that four people have gone for a trip to day itself so again like story is so heartwarming yeah yeah I think we could go on and on about this but interestingly you know when I was having this discussion early on with you and Pratham the goal was again to see like okay how many startups can come out of campus. Outside in, when a student is, let's say, making a choice, right? What are the factors that would incline somebody towards master's union being a startup incubator of sorts, right? You could argue that, and I'll probably play devil's advocate here, that time and money are better spent as an individual instead of, let's say, going to a structured program. Because structured and startup, to be fair, don't go in the same line, right? But I have also now, from the inside witness, that they can and they've produced such great outputs so what do you think the you know thesis is there as an institution when a student's coming in specially so there's this sense of how the student is thinking is ki there'll be two set of students one who is clear ki mishu start up karne karne hai in that case that student can say ki achha i should i be spending you know say 30 lakhs uh you know with hostel this and that it'll come out to be almost that there's a sense of questioning ki 30 lakh mein institute ko doonga Versus if I put that in my business, will it just not make more sense? And I'm like, sure, you can put that money in, not have anyone to guide you. Try to go to an incubator, may or may not get selected to the best ones. May not have the ecosystem, may not have the guidance. And can learn over the years. I do think there's a lot of learning each time that learn by doing. Because if you fall down again and again, at some point you will do it. But the goal. cost of getting exhausted and burnt out as a founder because you've done it wrong and because you just did not get that success, I would think that that is a trade-off that you should think of. Honestly, like a large part of my motivation to also devote time with like students and take up this as a challenge for myself was that, hey, you know, startup building is difficult. And there are so many factors that go in. If you were given an opportunity to be in a place which helps you systematically cover it, right? Like, my answer is life is long. In a 20-30 year career, if you spend a year where you get the chance to experiment, where you get the chance to get capital, support, mentorship, make mistakes, have a steady ground for it, I would take it all days of the week. And I think that's the empowering factor. Considering starting up is so lonely, challenging, uncertain, ambiguous, you are getting a platform where you can celebrate the journey alongside 200 people. The best part about these, you know, interesting startups is everybody is supporting each other, right? You're not lonely in the journey because you are going through the same things your peers are going through. And even the ones who went for placements, they are also rooting for these people because they know that what they're doing is 100x harder than going for the traditional placements. So you have that support of the entire ecosystem to your point. Yeah, and I think people recognize that so well. During the building phase also, I remember there was a chemicals company which became the vendor for three other companies on campus because they had to source something, right? That's so cool. I mean, where would you otherwise find this sort of an ecosystem? Right. do think as a founder you can't unless you have everything sorted which is great i think then you should go ahead and take it exactly but if there are open factors uh talent density for me that's one of the great factors so much of what i hear from people is you know i started up with that friend that i'm met at that institution. That very often happens at, you know, like an IIT, undergrad, whatnot, right? And years later, because you had built that bond, and trust is such an important factor, you go ahead and start up with them. So you get a chance to meet diverse individuals whom you can start up with. That can be a... a great factor. You get this ecosystem that I keep harping upon. It's very difficult to build it by yourself, right? And it's not a money arbitrage. And honestly, on the money argument, I do think if you want to build a genuinely large company and you've raised venture money in the past, I don't think 30 lakhs will cut it or it will take large amounts of dollars to actually build a great company. So if you're being short-sighted about the money, I don't think that would be enough of a reason. There are reasons otherwise, but I do think if you're you're an enthusiast who wants to build a company i think this provides the best landing spot and increases your odds significantly i think startup building is about odds right and this is just helping you simplify those odds and and maybe turn it in your favor so i think that's very empowering in fact to your point you know i'll pick from that thread because in cohort of 24 which is graduating we had one founder blue brew founder who came in with already a revenue of i think almost a crore per year and came in because he's like I know I have reached this point but I'm not able to go beyond right because I'm just stuck with the day-to-day I'm just not able to think bigger etc so so the profile that I was referring to before there's the sense of people who want to start a startup and they're like either I put that money and you know started already or I come here uh learn from the best of people who can tell me and in no way am I preaching that there's a right and only way to do a startup but I think there are enough wrong ways to do a startup if we can even tell people what are the wrong ways and don't fall for those traps so that you are being very quick in your iterations rather than learning over multiple years and then losing the energy and patience and everything that's what we're trying to solve for and then that second profile is going to be people who have built it alone I had put that money etc but now we're feeling ki nahi but sahi nahi kya ya you know I've not reached where I I still need to. The business is running. And in cohort of 25, I'm seeing so many more of such cases, which I feel really excited about because there are now people who are like, okay, I'm doing a sale of 50 lakhs. But how do I go from here? To me, that's a very exciting lot that's coming. Absolutely. And the last one is people who are like, okay, let's try a startup. If not, then placement is fine. So those are the three buckets that I would classify the students in a little bit. And I think that's. where the VIP is playing into their heads that how can I become financially independent through the Masters in program in some way. I absolutely agree. I've also had similar observations and with the next cohort, it's just very encouraging to know that people are coming with their mindset. I want to build, help me with it. And if the expectation is clear and they're leveraging the ecosystem to their advantage. I think these hard truths are something that you have to really capture on. And what I found really nice is that in the last cohort for for instance, As a company doing events, right? Events sounds very interesting. A lot of people have sometimes thought that, okay, maybe we can build a company in that space. Unfortunate truth is that you could go a couple years building it as well, but it becomes a lifestyle business. It does not become like a large venture scalable business. We were able to come to that conclusion in two, three months. We tried with the team. They did all the work. That's a great team. And now they're building a great company. You really feel that this team has a lot of potential if guided well, right? Exactly. And now they're building a cloud kitchen company, a host of brands. It took them three months to realize, but we were always honest with them. They did the work, but that's the best part, right? And this could have easily been a... 12-18 month journey where they would have to figure it out by themselves but why do that if you can have a support system around you right so I feel that's very encouraging so for me that bracket is if you want a space where you are okay to experiment and like make mistakes if you've not done that in the past in with your life taking that plunge can be reasonably difficult like you might have thought about building a startup but you you're not getting that conviction I do think you can then treat this as a place where you can make mistakes freely. And I think that is the most encouraging thing because once you can learn to make mistakes and be tough in your skin, you can do anything and everything. So for me, that's the other bracket I would look at. But yeah, no, VIP has been an incredible journey. Overall, in terms of experience from, you know, how the students have transformed and your personal experience as a founder, Mahat, what would you think are the crucial learnings that we've been able to observe in the next, like sort of last six months? And how are we, let's say, maybe, you know, we discussed a couple of these, like we had a half an hour, one hour call where we did this feedback breakdown. And that was really interesting, by the way. I also had a lot of interesting observations. You pointed out to so many things. We were on. point on the same page for most of them yeah 90% overlap but what are those changes maybe we can talk about and that will shed light on okay how do we think about doing this further and how can job creators come from campus Absolutely, that's a great point, Raj and I. Genuinely, one thing that I'll say, kudos to Pratham also and to this institute in the way we are building, is that we ourselves are also building in a very iterative manner. Because the idea is if we try something and it works, then we see how does it work better. And if we try something and it doesn't work, why did it not work? Let's just change something. What we observed a couple of things is that we want to provide students with a longer tenure in terms of their startup journey. So previously in the cohort of 2024, we had two stages which were mandatory and then two stages which were optional. Now what we've done is that we're making three stages mandatory and one optional and we're starting the entire venture initiation program from the second term itself which is just two and a half months into their journey because you know you're in my observation Jivraj was we don't want to push an idea too soon because pivots and idea finding, idea validation is such a critical part of the entire process that there's no point of rushing that. Absolutely. Right. So then if we give them two, two and a half extra months, that's a lot of additional time, like on a scale of like six months, if you're getting eight months, that just makes all the difference. And doing it early also benefits this way because as soon as you hit the six, eight months mark and we are a 16 month PG program, I think the student also starts really now figuring out that, you know, placement versus this. I want when they're thinking about their VIP, they should just simply be thinking about their VIP and not get anxious about placements. So that's another reason or change that we're doing. And I think some of the things that we would want to continue to do even more is that like in cohort 24, the number of check-ins, the one-on-ones, the mentors. I think you've been very helpful to bring in that ecosystem of mentors and we're trying to bring more of those because the batch has increased. So getting the right set of mentors who can really spend quality time, it can't be like a touch and go. It has to be the same mentor who understands my journey as a founder. How do you go deeper with those founders and, you know, get them to the right direction? That's something I think we'll do more of because we saw that it was really helpful. Other than that, I think the overall, like, I mean, granting funds to the students as they needed throughout the stages, doing the demo day even bigger. So... The MVP Mela was a big add-on. It was not something we'd done before. Because then it becomes like a precursor to your demo day. You get to pitch to the seven, eight people in a lower stake manner. But you build that confidence. So all those things I think will... continue to do. Yeah, no, that's lovely. I think I'm completely aligned on that because I also felt that, you know, the two most important aspects of a startup perhaps are A, it's very contextual. Each startup is a different journey, which means that, hey, you can't have, while you can have standardized sessions for all, you just need individual attention. And I was really pleased and very grateful to all the people that came to campus. I also interacted with some amazing folks. But folks really pitched in, right? And they were happy to work with the team in depth to understand where they were headed. So I think that's really nice and we want to do more of that this year. And we invite as many founders out there, you know, who... have benefited from the ecosystem and want to give back we are like very very greedy for a lot more time and mentorship for our students yeah i remember distinctly there was one of these mentors who came in he's a senior person at me show he was himself trying to build a company And he spoke to a team and he's like, hey, I loved it. Like, I mean, I was able to share my learnings on something and it was so interesting. So I think he also mentioned such strong feelings and he was like, hey, if I can do this more, let me know. And so that was really nice. And I think on the last part, right, I think... the market decision in and of itself is just so crucial for any company most founders say that okay that's a foundational you can change markets of course you pivot the trajectory but perhaps market remains the same so if you can spend more time deciding which market you choose and iterate which is why we're starting it earlier is a game changer i think that will largely benefit so many companies and i can't wait for the vip to have this year and invite more and more founders to actually take up the mu curriculum not because okay you'll probably get a fancy job but because you can build a fancy company in the future and i really hope it continues uh doing really really well and thanks a ton for having me as a part like it's it's very gratifying to play a very very small role in enabling so much of this. I think Jivraj, you've played more than a small role because of all the mentorship hours that you've given. So I think it's a huge fortune of ours to have mentors like you. And I'm personally very excited for the Venture Initiation Program of Cohort 2025. And for the people who don't know, our alumni of the VIP program are also doing well. There are two teams who've raised like 1.8 mil and 1.2 mil from multiple offices. Bulls Pre is there. Yes. So I do genuinely sincerely wish for the ecosystem to thrive and for Masters Union to be that job creator rather than the job seeker institute finally. Absolutely. Such a pleasure doing this with you, Mahek. Always a lovely time to chat with you and all the more doing this. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks, Juvraj.

Thank you so much. Today we want to talk about the amazing VIP program, the Venture Initiation Program that Masters Union does to fuel future job creators in the ecosystem. It's very interesting that so many folks talk about creating an ecosystem for starting up, yet there are very few institutions doing this on a systematic basis, especially in India. And Masters Union is known to be an institution that creates startups that will build the entrepreneurial ecosystem. What's the genesis of the venture initiation program?

So if you look at the vision of the founder Pratham Mittal, the vision was simple that how do you teach business by doing business, like the learn business by doing business is at the core of the pedagogy at Masters Union. Yeah. So what that means is there's actually two set of things that happen.

One is in class and one is out class. Everything which is more academic, which is more learning in the classroom is called in class. It will include your things like product management, sales, operations, everything that you know a traditional business school would also have probably.

Now what we've done differently or uniquely is that now imagine if you were a child what would you remember more like reading a book or watching a movie right and now imagine instead of watching the movie you're actually acting in the movie. Yeah. Your memory of acting in that movie would be so much more intense than you just having read it or even seen it for that matter depending on what kind of learning experience you like.

So that is what we're trying that how do you make the student the protagonist who is using all these skills that he's being taught inside the class and apply these to the outclass world where they are really learning business by doing business so venture initiation program is a subset of the entire outclass ecosystem in outclass we also have drop shipping we also have create a challenge we also have live projects but venture initiation program initiated With a simple thought that today if we're talking about Adminirbhar Bharat, we're talking about how you know 10 million jobs have to be created in India. I don't think we're prepared for that as a country. And to be able to do that more and more startups need to come out.

Right. That was the simple thought that how do we help these individuals who have entrepreneurial drive. Today like everybody is talking about Shark Tank and there's this aspiration that I also want to do. But how do you do it?

How do you not feel lost about the process? And that's what we're trying to do through our venture initiation program. That if you want to be a founder today or three years later, five years later or 10 years later, those learnings will stay with you no matter what.

I think starting up is just such a fundamentally transformative experience for any individual. And if an institution can help you de-risk that journey, because it's full of such amazing challenges, very diverse in nature. If an institution like Masters Union can help you de-risk that journey, help you through that journey, it can be really, really transforming. And we've seen that with the students this year.

And it's been so gratifying to witness. The VIP program is also very daunting because, okay, building a startup is so challenging and so contextual, right? Like every startup requires a different journey.

How do you build this YC meets, you know, institutional program? What do students have to go through, through the VIP program? I think first I'll say it's just incredibly hard to do it in a college ecosystem. Why? Because this is still a PG program where student is coming in with the expectation that they will be academics.

They are coming in with the expectation that many of them have to go into placements. Which means there is already so much peer pressure about, oh aapki kitne ki naukri lagi. Right, there's always that sense of and for the people who also want to start up there's the sense of but my friend is getting a salary of 4 lakhs per month Right, which is not there for me and you don't know for how long it's not there. It's not like there's a dead headline to it, some of them might achieve product market fit sooner versus later. So we saw that early on, you know, that a lot of students really struggled with this balance to make that decision.

Exactly. So one we, about the de-risking point, and then I'll come to the multiples. stages the thing that we introduced for this cohort for the first time the code of 24 which is graduating and you've been a mentor to so many of them is that we introduce something called founders fellowship now for founders fellowship it's as sweet a deal as we could have thought of when we have to offer it to our student every student who is in that thought that you know i think i've made enough progress through my venture initiation program in my startup and want to do startup full-time for the next six eight, nine, twelve, whatever number of months, Masters Union is sponsoring 50,000 rupees per month, per student, for them to be able to take that journey, to take that plan, so that they should not worry that how will the house run.

And we have like 25 people who've actually opted in for the Founder Fellowship, opted out of placements. That's so commendable. It is incredible for me, sitting here as the director of the PG program, that there are actually 25 entrepreneurs out of a batch. of just 200 who are really going to take the plunge, do this full time and the deal gets sweeter that okay at any point of time where the student feels that okay I don't think it's going in the right direction or I don't have the fuel to you know keep running anymore or whatever that looks like, they can come back into the placement process along with the next cohort and still seek placement support from the campus. Lovely.

So that's the de-risking part and which is probably why it has helped a lot of students to finally take that decision. Now, in terms of the multiple stages, we have four stages. The first one mandatory for all the students of Masters Union.

Now, we know that while only 10-15% of the cohort will essentially do something entrepreneurial, we want 100% of them to build the entrepreneur's mindset. How do you hustle? How do you get revenue? Like don't sit in your ivory towers. And you know just think that it will happen automatically, it doesn't work like that.

You have to really go on the ground, sell shamelessly, get revenue, identify that you know product market fit etc. So the first two stages is the pre-seed stage where they're trying to figure out what could be the right idea to work on. Now some students are coming in with the right idea or you know they have some idea of what they want to work on. There's some students who do not know where to start from. So this is the stage where they're really tinkering around speaking to friends identifying who who the right set of co-founders could be and then figuring out what's the right space what is a large unsolved problem and we're also telling them don't worry if someone wants to make a business make a business if someone wants to make a VC backable business make that so you have the option to choose between the two you can choose to build a bootstrap business lifestyle business and we are 100% good with that also so in the pre-seed stage you actually decide what the idea is going to be Now, in the second stage, which is the minimum viable product, you take that idea, find a scrappy solution to be able to take it to the market, to take it to your potential customers, to figure out what that customer base is going to be.

From there, the third stage is how do you really go to the market? Because you've created this scrappy MVP, but till you go to the market, do this iterative process of, you know, getting the customer feedback, launching it, where do you want to launch it? Do you want to do B2B, B2C?

Do you want to go to stores or do you want to do it online, etc.? So those decisions students start taking early on. So the third stage of the go-to-market strategy is optional.

And the fourth stage, which is your suite PMF, which is what you're hoping for, the product market fit. So students are iterating on that product and process and hoping that they would have achieved product market fit. And that's like a continuous journey from there. So the last two stages, again, is optional.

It's for people who are continuing on that founder journey. Yeah. And then after all of this is done, we do what you were saying about, you know, marrying the entire Y Combinator meets college space.

We bring in 100 VCs, both early stage, late stage, etc. Who actually write checks for our students? The top 10-15 teams, they end up pitching to these 100 VCs in a single room. And Jivraj, you interact with VCs more than I do, I think.

How much time do you think it would take for an individual to get those 100 meetings? I mean, three to six months at the least, sometimes a year, and maybe never because, you know, to get access to some of the names that came, and in one bulk and to create an impression, more importantly, just so magnanimous. I think most founders with a great pedigree with 20 plus years of experience also fail to sometimes get these meetings and that way it's very very appreciable what MU is able to achieve on that demo day.

A couple of points there that I feel are helpful to also understand are throughout the startup building journey there are points like okay capital support right you need capital to continue and you probably can't raise with a scrappy idea at the start so what i find also very encouraging is the risk appetite that masters union shows right by ensuring that if a startup needs money for whatever reason as long as you justify the means and you provide the right uh proof of work you are actually getting that capital no questions asked and that's so so helpful and over a period of time i think deciding which market i think these foundational decisions can be crucial in your building journey and i've been at a position where in january we were discussing a food company, which eventually became a detergent company. We've gone through so many of these iterations. And I feel that is, again, very, very helpful, because I think so much of building a startup is avoiding mistakes than, you know, getting the right recipe for success.

And so much of this external mentor support, brainstorming, having deadlines that help you iterate fast enough are helpful in the startup journey that may not be available to a general founder. And that is why I think the journey gets, it's never simple to build a company, but definitely de-risk from a capital mentorship support lens. And I think that's the best part of the progression. And we saw great numbers, I think even in the optional sort of phases, which were GTM and BMF, we had, I think, 30-35 startups on demo day 16 presented, there were two additional bootstrap businesses that presented so that's 18 startups you would find it very difficult to get like 18 startups on any campus let alone I mean, India, I think abroad as well.

I'm sure you were at GSB, so you can speak more about that as well. Coming to maybe Demo Day, it'll be really helpful to start with maybe the impact that we saw this year, which is commendable, huge credit to the students. I think at Masters Union, other than the money that we've committed, like if I take 25 people and that's almost 5 lakh per year that we're committing.

So that's a good 1.25 crore that Masters Union is earmarking for these startup founders. And that is all equity free. And other than that, we would have also given grants, like you were saying, so we had given at least 50 to 60 lakhs of grants across these four stages, all equity free, simply because these are our students. So that's the kind of madness that we have for people to actually create. And you've been a mentor with a lot of students, right?

And you'd also brought in a lot of mentors who were industry specific mentors, like every single team that was building, they had an industry mentor, who could tell them that, you know, why was will this work versus not and it's not like they're saying that don't do this or do this but at least they'll give their experience of why this might work or might not and I think there's a lot of learning from that as well so I thought I'll just double click on both those points now in terms of the magnitude of demo day and before the demo day we also had this like you know small mbp fair where students you know put that fair that is so much energy on the campus I mean people have put their fairy lights and they brought in their product a lot of sale was happening on the on the spot also and they interacted with those mentors and you know got feedback and then these same students you know who had been interacting you'd been interacting with day in day out when they went on the stage for demo day and presented their final pitch i was like oh my god are these the same students like the confidence with which they presented the conviction with which they presented All of that to me was, I was just blown away. Like I was like, this is what I need. Now coming to the outcomes, because you know, ultimately, if the input is all right, you know, if you put the right set of hard work, you provided that ecosystem, you provided.

mentorship then you would want and expect that some great outcome is coming absolutely so this year alone in a batch of 200 and for the 25 odd founders and that's going to be probably some eight nine teams in total we've had one term sheet which is like you know one point play super is going to be 1.3 million dollars yes like almost 10 crores it's uh it's like magnanimous you It's fantastic. Like in just seven months, you build that idea and you've raised funding of that order. So that's one that comes to mind.

And then there are multiple people who've done angel rounds of 80 lakhs, 50 lakhs, etc. Yeah, Seedze is one another great example. They have a term sheet of 250k.

That money is going to hit the bank. They are now looking at hiring people, building the product. They have this amazing demo that we witnessed through multiple demo days.

You can bring those Seedze founders in this room right now. There's one day, I so vividly remember that and I'm sure you will have so many more memories of such things. Where both of them, they came to me and they're like, I don't understand, should I take this job? And I was like, absolutely not.

Like because I could see what they're building. Absolutely. And I was like, this isn't the absolute right direction.

Because they were saying that no, we're not able to pitch the story properly. The feedback from one of the VC was a little disheartening. So they felt like, maybe we're just not the right set of founders. But from there, they came such a long way. Like finally, I was like, you're going to send me weekly updates no matter what.

No problem. Like just... Listen to me, I will make sure I refer you to my network.

But the confidence change that they saw in that, Jivraj, I was so happy to see that transformation. It's so, so, so fulfilling. They have done fantastic as well. They're getting that 250K USD in their bank.

And then there's one more team which got an offer for Acquihire. Yeah. To me that was also a great outcome, right? Like where another big company is telling that you are building this, I want to build this in my company.

Why don't you come and build it within my company and I'm going to earmark some capital for it. It's really, really nice. So yeah, I think VIP Demo Day was so very fulfilling again because we saw these results.

And again, the clarity with which the founders were pitching, right? You couldn't have like, you could be in any room and you would say that these founders have thought through what they've done. Then. execution was showing the effort was so evident right and they were as articulate as any other founder probably would be perhaps better than most out there and i was so so proud of the effort that everybody's put in so it was really great to see and that's the that's the output in my opinion right the fact that 16 startups were presenting as professionally as any other founder out there with great clarity on their business model if you can as an institution produce these outputs right they are bound to be successful how will life will tell right like some startups will fail more often than not they will right but the fact that they've been on this trajectory once enabled by the institution will only enable more and more such instances in their lives and lead to success in multiple terms i agree and one more example actually comes to mind when you're saying is that of of high school.

Yeah. So that founder within just those six seven months created his first cohort of students and the school is live and His first like six months has led to a revenue of 17 Max yeah, and I'm I'm like a big fan of Atlas foods So so I'm like just waiting for the world to try their product one more. They've already gotten PR They've been covered by two of the newspaper articles etc also came out about them So again the conviction and you talk to Ishita and she'll say even now, it was then C5 orientation, she was there.

She's like, I had also not thought that I can become a founder because I didn't see it in myself. MU made me see it that, you know, I too can do it. She would call me and she's like, I'm in Jalandhar right now.

I'm at a factory right now. I'm figuring out production. Crazy hustle.

Every time. Crazy hustle. Crazy.

And that's the ground level impact. Somebody who was building eco-friendly solutions now building a B2B solution. That's pretty great.

folks who did not get a chance to present. many of them are also now pursuing. Yes.

That's so commendable as well. They realize that maybe they were not ready at that point, but they want to continue. And that is also really encouraging to see because they're not afraid of, you know, saying that, okay, we didn't do this in this timeline, but we did get enabled by so much of what we want to do. And that's also really nice. I think what I'm seeing, the fundamental shift, Jivraj, is that the student is asking himself or herself, ki ab nahi toh fir kab?

You know, this is my one... time where the ecosystem in terms of finding the right mentors in terms of finding the right co-founders in terms of finding the right term like you know amount of money etc all of it is being served to me on a platter now if it doesn't happen now then it will happen someday correct correct so that mindset shift because i was also surprised by these people who didn't present on the demo day but still they're continuing correct and from so many unconventional backgrounds like there's a student who's a CA ranker yeah for three months was doing something else then three months something else they ranked top five on demo day and now he's pursuing this he's taken the founder fellowship and i remember like three months back he was asking me about jobs i was like why and then suddenly everything turns around and so much of by the way what he attributed is like hey we ranked on demo day and that's boosted my confidence to be like i can build a business yeah and that's so encouraging again and that was completely by virtue of you know everybody voting for it and in fact he was telling me today there are religious travel companies Shri Shardana that four people have gone for a trip to day itself so again like story is so heartwarming yeah yeah I think we could go on and on about this but interestingly you know when I was having this discussion early on with you and Pratham the goal was again to see like okay how many startups can come out of campus. Outside in, when a student is, let's say, making a choice, right? What are the factors that would incline somebody towards master's union being a startup incubator of sorts, right? You could argue that, and I'll probably play devil's advocate here, that time and money are better spent as an individual instead of, let's say, going to a structured program.

Because structured and startup, to be fair, don't go in the same line, right? But I have also now, from the inside witness, that they can and they've produced such great outputs so what do you think the you know thesis is there as an institution when a student's coming in specially so there's this sense of how the student is thinking is ki there'll be two set of students one who is clear ki mishu start up karne karne hai in that case that student can say ki achha i should i be spending you know say 30 lakhs uh you know with hostel this and that it'll come out to be almost that there's a sense of questioning ki 30 lakh mein institute ko doonga Versus if I put that in my business, will it just not make more sense? And I'm like, sure, you can put that money in, not have anyone to guide you. Try to go to an incubator, may or may not get selected to the best ones. May not have the ecosystem, may not have the guidance.

And can learn over the years. I do think there's a lot of learning each time that learn by doing. Because if you fall down again and again, at some point you will do it. But the goal.

cost of getting exhausted and burnt out as a founder because you've done it wrong and because you just did not get that success, I would think that that is a trade-off that you should think of. Honestly, like a large part of my motivation to also devote time with like students and take up this as a challenge for myself was that, hey, you know, startup building is difficult. And there are so many factors that go in. If you were given an opportunity to be in a place which helps you systematically cover it, right?

Like, my answer is life is long. In a 20-30 year career, if you spend a year where you get the chance to experiment, where you get the chance to get capital, support, mentorship, make mistakes, have a steady ground for it, I would take it all days of the week. And I think that's the empowering factor. Considering starting up is so lonely, challenging, uncertain, ambiguous, you are getting a platform where you can celebrate the journey alongside 200 people.

The best part about these, you know, interesting startups is everybody is supporting each other, right? You're not lonely in the journey because you are going through the same things your peers are going through. And even the ones who went for placements, they are also rooting for these people because they know that what they're doing is 100x harder than going for the traditional placements. So you have that support of the entire ecosystem to your point. Yeah, and I think people recognize that so well.

During the building phase also, I remember there was a chemicals company which became the vendor for three other companies on campus because they had to source something, right? That's so cool. I mean, where would you otherwise find this sort of an ecosystem?

Right. do think as a founder you can't unless you have everything sorted which is great i think then you should go ahead and take it exactly but if there are open factors uh talent density for me that's one of the great factors so much of what i hear from people is you know i started up with that friend that i'm met at that institution. That very often happens at, you know, like an IIT, undergrad, whatnot, right?

And years later, because you had built that bond, and trust is such an important factor, you go ahead and start up with them. So you get a chance to meet diverse individuals whom you can start up with. That can be a... a great factor. You get this ecosystem that I keep harping upon.

It's very difficult to build it by yourself, right? And it's not a money arbitrage. And honestly, on the money argument, I do think if you want to build a genuinely large company and you've raised venture money in the past, I don't think 30 lakhs will cut it or it will take large amounts of dollars to actually build a great company. So if you're being short-sighted about the money, I don't think that would be enough of a reason. There are reasons otherwise, but I do think if you're you're an enthusiast who wants to build a company i think this provides the best landing spot and increases your odds significantly i think startup building is about odds right and this is just helping you simplify those odds and and maybe turn it in your favor so i think that's very empowering in fact to your point you know i'll pick from that thread because in cohort of 24 which is graduating we had one founder blue brew founder who came in with already a revenue of i think almost a crore per year and came in because he's like I know I have reached this point but I'm not able to go beyond right because I'm just stuck with the day-to-day I'm just not able to think bigger etc so so the profile that I was referring to before there's the sense of people who want to start a startup and they're like either I put that money and you know started already or I come here uh learn from the best of people who can tell me and in no way am I preaching that there's a right and only way to do a startup but I think there are enough wrong ways to do a startup if we can even tell people what are the wrong ways and don't fall for those traps so that you are being very quick in your iterations rather than learning over multiple years and then losing the energy and patience and everything that's what we're trying to solve for and then that second profile is going to be people who have built it alone I had put that money etc but now we're feeling ki nahi but sahi nahi kya ya you know I've not reached where I I still need to.

The business is running. And in cohort of 25, I'm seeing so many more of such cases, which I feel really excited about because there are now people who are like, okay, I'm doing a sale of 50 lakhs. But how do I go from here?

To me, that's a very exciting lot that's coming. Absolutely. And the last one is people who are like, okay, let's try a startup. If not, then placement is fine.

So those are the three buckets that I would classify the students in a little bit. And I think that's. where the VIP is playing into their heads that how can I become financially independent through the Masters in program in some way.

I absolutely agree. I've also had similar observations and with the next cohort, it's just very encouraging to know that people are coming with their mindset. I want to build, help me with it. And if the expectation is clear and they're leveraging the ecosystem to their advantage. I think these hard truths are something that you have to really capture on.

And what I found really nice is that in the last cohort for for instance, As a company doing events, right? Events sounds very interesting. A lot of people have sometimes thought that, okay, maybe we can build a company in that space. Unfortunate truth is that you could go a couple years building it as well, but it becomes a lifestyle business.

It does not become like a large venture scalable business. We were able to come to that conclusion in two, three months. We tried with the team.

They did all the work. That's a great team. And now they're building a great company.

You really feel that this team has a lot of potential if guided well, right? Exactly. And now they're building a cloud kitchen company, a host of brands.

It took them three months to realize, but we were always honest with them. They did the work, but that's the best part, right? And this could have easily been a... 12-18 month journey where they would have to figure it out by themselves but why do that if you can have a support system around you right so I feel that's very encouraging so for me that bracket is if you want a space where you are okay to experiment and like make mistakes if you've not done that in the past in with your life taking that plunge can be reasonably difficult like you might have thought about building a startup but you you're not getting that conviction I do think you can then treat this as a place where you can make mistakes freely. And I think that is the most encouraging thing because once you can learn to make mistakes and be tough in your skin, you can do anything and everything.

So for me, that's the other bracket I would look at. But yeah, no, VIP has been an incredible journey. Overall, in terms of experience from, you know, how the students have transformed and your personal experience as a founder, Mahat, what would you think are the crucial learnings that we've been able to observe in the next, like sort of last six months? And how are we, let's say, maybe, you know, we discussed a couple of these, like we had a half an hour, one hour call where we did this feedback breakdown.

And that was really interesting, by the way. I also had a lot of interesting observations. You pointed out to so many things. We were on.

point on the same page for most of them yeah 90% overlap but what are those changes maybe we can talk about and that will shed light on okay how do we think about doing this further and how can job creators come from campus Absolutely, that's a great point, Raj and I. Genuinely, one thing that I'll say, kudos to Pratham also and to this institute in the way we are building, is that we ourselves are also building in a very iterative manner. Because the idea is if we try something and it works, then we see how does it work better.

And if we try something and it doesn't work, why did it not work? Let's just change something. What we observed a couple of things is that we want to provide students with a longer tenure in terms of their startup journey.

So previously in the cohort of 2024, we had two stages which were mandatory and then two stages which were optional. Now what we've done is that we're making three stages mandatory and one optional and we're starting the entire venture initiation program from the second term itself which is just two and a half months into their journey because you know you're in my observation Jivraj was we don't want to push an idea too soon because pivots and idea finding, idea validation is such a critical part of the entire process that there's no point of rushing that. Absolutely. Right.

So then if we give them two, two and a half extra months, that's a lot of additional time, like on a scale of like six months, if you're getting eight months, that just makes all the difference. And doing it early also benefits this way because as soon as you hit the six, eight months mark and we are a 16 month PG program, I think the student also starts really now figuring out that, you know, placement versus this. I want when they're thinking about their VIP, they should just simply be thinking about their VIP and not get anxious about placements.

So that's another reason or change that we're doing. And I think some of the things that we would want to continue to do even more is that like in cohort 24, the number of check-ins, the one-on-ones, the mentors. I think you've been very helpful to bring in that ecosystem of mentors and we're trying to bring more of those because the batch has increased.

So getting the right set of mentors who can really spend quality time, it can't be like a touch and go. It has to be the same mentor who understands my journey as a founder. How do you go deeper with those founders and, you know, get them to the right direction? That's something I think we'll do more of because we saw that it was really helpful.

Other than that, I think the overall, like, I mean, granting funds to the students as they needed throughout the stages, doing the demo day even bigger. So... The MVP Mela was a big add-on.

It was not something we'd done before. Because then it becomes like a precursor to your demo day. You get to pitch to the seven, eight people in a lower stake manner.

But you build that confidence. So all those things I think will... continue to do.

Yeah, no, that's lovely. I think I'm completely aligned on that because I also felt that, you know, the two most important aspects of a startup perhaps are A, it's very contextual. Each startup is a different journey, which means that, hey, you can't have, while you can have standardized sessions for all, you just need individual attention. And I was really pleased and very grateful to all the people that came to campus.

I also interacted with some amazing folks. But folks really pitched in, right? And they were happy to work with the team in depth to understand where they were headed. So I think that's really nice and we want to do more of that this year. And we invite as many founders out there, you know, who...

have benefited from the ecosystem and want to give back we are like very very greedy for a lot more time and mentorship for our students yeah i remember distinctly there was one of these mentors who came in he's a senior person at me show he was himself trying to build a company And he spoke to a team and he's like, hey, I loved it. Like, I mean, I was able to share my learnings on something and it was so interesting. So I think he also mentioned such strong feelings and he was like, hey, if I can do this more, let me know.

And so that was really nice. And I think on the last part, right, I think... the market decision in and of itself is just so crucial for any company most founders say that okay that's a foundational you can change markets of course you pivot the trajectory but perhaps market remains the same so if you can spend more time deciding which market you choose and iterate which is why we're starting it earlier is a game changer i think that will largely benefit so many companies and i can't wait for the vip to have this year and invite more and more founders to actually take up the mu curriculum not because okay you'll probably get a fancy job but because you can build a fancy company in the future and i really hope it continues uh doing really really well and thanks a ton for having me as a part like it's it's very gratifying to play a very very small role in enabling so much of this. I think Jivraj, you've played more than a small role because of all the mentorship hours that you've given.

So I think it's a huge fortune of ours to have mentors like you. And I'm personally very excited for the Venture Initiation Program of Cohort 2025. And for the people who don't know, our alumni of the VIP program are also doing well. There are two teams who've raised like 1.8 mil and 1.2 mil from multiple offices. Bulls Pre is there. Yes.

So I do genuinely sincerely wish for the ecosystem to thrive and for Masters Union to be that job creator rather than the job seeker institute finally. Absolutely. Such a pleasure doing this with you, Mahek.

Always a lovely time to chat with you and all the more doing this. Thank you. Absolutely. Thanks, Juvraj.

Transcript for:Venture Initiation Program Overview

Transcript for:
Venture Initiation Program Overview