Intersection of Students and Business: An Indian Perspective

In the very first of my articles for Business today, I thought being an Indian student entrepreneur, it would make sense to write about the Indian perspective of how is student-business relationship viewed and its future going ahead.

India is home to a significant portion of today`s world youth population and the country itself has 51% of its population under 25. Such a substantial proportion of potential consumers and future business leaders and entrepreneurs is hard to neglect due to which businesses have lately tried to go an extra mile to tap the potential for out-of-box innovation and next big consumer market.

Big business interaction with the students has grown from practically negligible to being very healthy and dynamic. India has grown from days of license raj, where for any business there were significant entry barriers and in absence of competition incumbent players often neglected any segment which did not had direct impact on their balance sheet. Only few corporates went that extra mile to extend
ties with colleges and interact healthily with students. Some corporates established colleges and universities out of profits which they derived from monopolies and considered it as their bit of returning wealth to the society.

Fast forward to modern times - post the economic liberalization which country witnessed in early 1990s, a large fleet of cutting edge professionally managed organizations have changed the rules of the game. With innovation becoming increasingly the buzzword and user experience, brand and attraction of best talents gaining importance, businesses are increasingly looking for shaking hands
with premier colleges and student organizations to interact with them more positively.

Establishing such relations has been in strategic interest for companies apart from students for whom the benefits have been manifold. Such relations have increasingly helped companies to assess and develop skill pool, create brand for being an employer of choice and market their products. Companies engaging constructively in such interactions have been able to get feedback and assess
potential markets apart from getting a clean picture of depth of skill set and vital insights into various opinions and perceptions.

Another major driver of big business growing relationship with students has been the increasing consumption from this segment and the vast untapped potential. An economy which is largely domestic consumption driven, and substantial part of consumption boom being fueled by youth many of whom are still students, it is becoming increasingly unaffordable for marketing managers not to strike chord with this segment.

All this has culminated into student relationship increasingly getting attention of many companies and setting up of many premier educational institutes by companies and their promoters as a way of establishing their brand and getting required skilled manpower which they might be able to groom for becoming future managers and employees. We now witness in India, these relationships maturing into companies increasingly supporting students to innovate and think out of box and
experiment in previously uncharted territories. New developments like student run corporate enterprises serving top companies and having off track and impressive business models is what the country is now beginning to witness which potentially could open a new chapter in the student business relationship and write a new global story!