Work-life ready youth talent
Struggling to find the right young talent for entry level roles in your organisation? This is a prevailing problem in India, because even as more students are earning degrees, it’s also true that they are not work-life ready. Let’s try and fix this problem together!
Cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset
An indepth insights report that attempts to identify an entrepreneurial mindset and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed according to industry practitioners.
Overview
With the increasing rate of change induced by social-ecological challenges and innovations in AI, digitisation and more, it is critical that we as a society learn to adapt to the emerging challenges and opportunities.
We need more people, especially youth to be changemakers with an entrepreneurial mindset towards contributing positively to organisations and society at large (being work-ready) and creating purposeful, secure and abundant livelihoods (being life ready).
However, despite the challenges and opportunities, more than 50% of youth in India do not have an entrepreneurial mindset towards being work and life ready which results in the talent gap, youth not having purposeful careers and less changemakers in society.
This roots from multiple societal structures and mindsets like – unequal access to education, lack of focus of self-awareness in the education system, models that facilitate this kind of development are hard to replicate, and a scarcity mindset that leads to financial security and academic performance being prioritised above all else.
This report highlights an analysis of the perspectives of 17 industry leaders as to what competencies are needed for youth to build this entrepreneurial mindset and how challenging experiential projects can help youth develop them.
Then the report goes into the case study of the learning journeys of 18 Let’s Enterprise Fellows who participated in the Enterprise India Fellowship which helps youth build an entrepreneurial mindset through experiential learning i.e. learning by doing and reflecting.
Participating in programs with experiential learning helps build an entrepreneurial mindset. But the slow rate of replication of such models makes it hard to reach scale. While educators and changemakers work on addressing that, if youth are encouraged to build an attitude of “Building a Body of Work” and create a network of experiences (student orgs, internships, volunteering etc) for themselves beyond their academics, they build an entrepreneurial mindset towards being work and life ready. This decentralised nature of this approach makes it applicable to youth across different spectrums.
Research Participants
Acknowledgement
Research & Writing Team
- Adwait Rayate – Student, Suryadatta Junior College
- Dariya Budhani – Outreach Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
- Hemang Agrawal – Mechanical Eng. Student, NMIMS
- Jay Chandrani – Manager, JC Nachos & Tacos
- Pooja Agrawal – Graduate Consultant, Levant Consulting
- Ronit Chamadia – Management Trainee & Chamadia Group
- Akash Bhalerao – Team Member, Let’s Enterprise & Ashoka Globalizer
Design & Content Team
- Gaurav Joshi – Account Manager – Design, Ideosphere
- Albert Babu – Design Account Manager, Ideosphere
- Alisha Mor – Content Account Manager, Ideosphere
- Tarun Mehta – Design Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
- Daksh Kanoria – Impact Measurement Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
- Jagruti Jethwani – Fmr Content Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
- Rhythm Joshi – Content Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
- Nikita Juneja – Program Manager, Let’s Enterprise
- Rahul Devkar – Impact Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
Concept & Support Team
- Aditya Jhunjhunwala – Co-Founder & CEO, Let’s Enterprise
- Aniruddha Bhagwat – Co-Founder & CEO, Ideosphere
- Ankita Parashar – Co-Lead, Let’s Enterprise
- Palak Krishnamurthy – Co-Founder, Let’s Enterprise & Anibrain
- Shoebahmed Shaikh – Director, Ideosphere
- Urmila Samson – Outreach Director, Let’s Enterprise
- Yusuf Hakim – Co-Founder, Let’s Enterprise
- Akash Bhalerao – Team Member, Let’s Enterprise & Ashoka Globalizer
Interviewed Employers (Business Leaders, Entrepreneurs & Professionals)
- Ameesha Prabhu – CEO, Trust for Retailers & Retail Associates of India
- Anupam Kulkarni – CEO, iauro Systems Pvt Limited
- Arun Kalluraya – Director, Vitalife Health Services
- Bindu Nair – Sr. Project Manager, Ishanya Foundation
- Chirag Maheshwari – Deputy General Manager, Porter
- Dr. Pallavi Tak – Vice President of Programs, CIIE.CO
- Hansika Singh – Principal Strategist, Forum for the Future
- Hitendra Singh – Sr. Director, Emcure
- Ishaan Kanoi – Sr. Internal Auditor, Cummins Inc.
- Jinal Thakkar – Co-Founder, Infinity Labs
- Kayomarz Anklesvaria – Subject Matter Expert, Cyber Security Corporation
- Manisha Shaikh – Proprietor & Coach, Catalyst Consultants
- Mohammed Qureshi – Director of Partnerships, Build Something Different
- Mohit Khandelwal – Digital Customer Experience, Tata Consultancy Services
- Raman Nanda – Founder & CEO, Step Transformations
- Sharang Shah – Sr. Manager Public Policy, Chase India
- Sonali Mitra – Head of Strategy, Mondelez India
Interviewed Youth (Let’s Enterprise Fellows)
- Adwait Rayate – Student, Suryadatta Junior College
- Anish Kale – Co-Founder, Homemade Barista
- Apeksha Rathod – Executive Assistant, Adipa
- Bhaskar Adari – Freelance Graphic Designer, YVCare
- Daksh Kanoria – Analyst, Deloitte
- Dariya Budhani – Outreach Catalyst, Let’s Enterprise
- Dnyanesh Chandewar – Co-Founder, CyberCORE
- Hatim Choonawala – Co-owner, Prime Containers
- Jagruti Jethwani – MA in Information Systems, California State University
- Jay Shah – MA in Engineering Management, University of Southern California
- Mrunmayee Padmagirwar – Content Associate, Amaha
- Nehalika Jethwani – Trainee, Lucasta
- Pooja Agrawal – Graduate Consultant, Levant Consulting
- Rahul Devkar – Co-owner, Jay Bhavani Jewellers
- Shivam Mistry – Sales & Business Development, Klug Avalon Mechatronics
- Shreeya Mendiratta – Publisher Management Associate, Media.net
- Swaran Singh Matharu – Marketing Strategist, Davis Index
- Yukti Gupta – Addressable Associate, Matterkind
Reviewers and Thinking Partners (Changemakers in the Education, Experiential Learning, Livelihoods and Leadership Development Spaces)
- Amit Nandkeolyar PhD – Professor of Organization Behaviour, IIM Ahmedabad, India
- Anna Durward – Leadership Coach, OLI Wellbeing, Australia
- Anna Oposa – Executive Director, Save Philippines Sea, Philippines
- Chitra Shah – Director, Satya Special School, India
- Claire Fallender – Global Youth Strategy Lead, Ashoka, US
- David L. Gould – Professor of Life Design, University of Iowa, US
- Deepak Khaitan – Founder Director, Sunshine Worldwide Secondary School Goa, India
- Gopal Garg – Co-Founder, Youth4Jobs & Ashoka ASPIRE Partnership Lead, India
- Hrishabh Sandilya PhD – EU Programme for Integration & Migration, Belgium
- Kenneth G. Brown PhD – Fmr. Associate Dean & Professor of Mgmt., University of Iowa, US
- Lakshmi Kumar – Founder Director, The Orchid School Pune, India
- Lubaina Cementwala – Consultant, Clarity Consulting, UK
- Madan Padaki – Co-Founder, 1BRIDGE & G.A.M.E. Strategic Advisor, UNICEF & YuWaah!, India
- Nadine Freeman – Co-Director, Ashoka Globalizer, US
- Natalia Mesa – Co-Founder, aeioTU & Morpho Project, Colombia
- Olga Shirobokova – Co-Lead of Global Knowledge, Ashoka, Austria
- Paul Mintner – Learning & Leadership Development Specialist, University of Missouri, US
- Rajendra Joshi – Co-Founder, Saath, India
- Rakesh Basant – Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Management- Ahmedabad, India
- Simon Mtabazi – Co-Founder, Mingati, Tanzania
- Stella Printezi – Entrepreneurial Mindset Trainer, ALBA Business School & Partnership Lead, Ashoka Globalizer, Greece
- Surekha Bhalerao PhD – Founder, SMILE Wellness Foundation, India
- Tia Johnston Brown – Global Director, Ashoka Youth Years, US
- Tina Molund – Co-Worker Engagement Lead, IKEA Social Entrepreneurship, Sweden
- Yashveer Singh – Co-Founder, Ashoka Young Changemakers, India
The Ecosystem’s Take
Here’s what our partners and change-makers have to say