IIM Grads Who Trashed Placements For A Startup Life

Many MBA graduates today skip their placements and start their own companies. Even graduates from the most sought after institutions in the country are doing the same. IIM graduates who pay lakhs for their graduate degrees are passing out of the institution to start their own ventures instead of taking a comfortable job with good pay. These IIM graduates decided that entrepreneurial ventures are the right way to go even though it means facing a lot of hurdles and challenges.

These 5 IIM graduates felt that they had to break out of the routine and to execute the plan they have been dreaming of for quite some time according to a compilation by ET.

#1 Gaurav Midha

Gaurav Midha an alumnus of IIM Lucknow along with his two batch mates, started a data analytics firm, Beyond Numbers, freshly within months of joining campus. His co-founders took up job offers during placements at the end of the their post graduate course in IIM Lucknow but this entrepreneur went ahead with Beyond numbers and decided to keep his dream alive. "Data analytics is still a relatively new concept in India but it's been growing at 20%-25%. I want a share of that pie," he says.

#2 Venkat R

Venkat is an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad. Conceived as a social media platform to get photographers to discuss and share their photographs, Focaloid was launched on 19th August – incidentally World Photography Day - by a group of photography enthusiasts when they figured out that there was no place for them to discuss with their fellow aficionados from around the world. The website has caught the eye of photographers across the world given the 200,000 page visits they have clocked up within 4 months of their launch and the average visit length of 12 minutes where the users gaze at their ‘Photoboard.’

Recently incubated through the iAccelarator program in CIIE – IIM Ahmedabad, Focaloid was also selected to the Microsoft BizSpark plus program, which identifies the top start-ups in the technology domain.

Given that Focaloid has not just caught the eye of the shutterbug community but also the business world, Focaloid could be the next big thing in the fast evolving world of e-business tomorrow. Venkat has received a seed fund of Rs 5 lakh from the CIIE and has raised another Rs 4 lakh along with two other friends who have just quit regular jobs.

#3 Niranjan KM

Niranjan KM of IIM Indore has come up with a brilliant idea to sell sanitary napkins in rural areas. He previously wanted to be a candy maker or a mineral water producer but somewhere along the way he realized that the there is tremendous room for growth in the rural areas for sanitary napkins. His research showed rural women know little about sanitary napkins and his marketing campaign includes raising awareness through skits during festivals.

Niranjan will start the plant in global manufacturing hub Tirupur. "The big companies see money in the urban areas, while I plan to concentrate on rural areas. I can sell each napkin for around Rs 3-4 which is about half the cost for such a product from an FMCG major," he says. His idea needs 1 Crore to take flight and the Tamil Nadu government has already approved 25lakhs for this project.

#4 Ajusal Sugathan & Achin Agarwal

Ajusal Sugathan and Achin Agarwal are alumni of IIM Bangalore. Their startup called Hedge Quants specializes in quantitative trading and investment strategies across Indian equities, fixed income, currency, volatility and derivatives.

"We have developed seven to eight models and our simulation tests show we can predict market movements," says Ajusal Sugathan.

"Unlike the West, Indian markets do not use the algorithm-based trading method, but our live simulations have shown good results," adds Sugathan.

Hedge Quants is tied up with Kolkata based brokerage firm Shivmangal Securities on a profit sharing mode.