Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder, Info Edge India Ltd (owns Naukri.com, 99acres.com, Jeevansathi.com and Shiksha.com)
Alma mater: IIMA
Management education gives you the knowledge of various things and helps you know what to look for, especially in challenging situations. I was a student at IIMA from 1987 to 1989. The students who are aspiring to join IIM should head towards it with an open mind and study all subjects thoroughly. Try to get a thorough knowledge of all the subjects as one does not know how each general subject can help one in business. One should aim to be a generalist rather than a specialist. These days, management students are thinking more about placements from the beginning and what job one will get after they graduate. Thirty years ago, they used to concentrate on subjects and used to worry about jobs only during the last few months of their course.
An entrepreneur requires good managerial skills and the rigorous training at IIMA is very useful. Thinking through strategic situations, understanding the nuances of marketing and seeing through a balance sheet are as critical for a manager as it is for an entrepreneur. Besides, a good business school trains you to be a leader. The case method at business schools trains you to understand that everything is situation specific, and to do a fresh analysis each time ab initio (from the beginning). There is no one-size-fits-all solution. And this is good training for adapting as you go along in your business career. Focus on the basics of business. Use all opportunities to get exposure to entrepreneurial opportunities and the ecosystem.
I also found that diversity in the classroom fosters an entrepreneurial mindset as students are exposed to multiple perspectives. It is good to see that the diversity in the student population is on the rise in institutions like IIMA. Management institutions should create opportunities for MBA students to get exposed to entrepreneurship through a variety of courses. The existence of a vibrant centre at the IIMA campus (startup incubator CIIE) provides such opportunities to its students. They are able to do a variety of courses, many of which are based on live entrepreneurial projects in collaboration with startups supported by CIIE. Opportunities are also being created to expose students to funding-related issues, once again through live cases. An active entrepreneurship club on campus helps leverage the opportunities to interact with entrepreneurs. In our days, such opportunities did not exist.
—As told to Abhinav Singh