In the last few years, the trend of students opting for entrepreneurship right after an IIM programme has gained pace, but what global engineering giant Ingersoll Rand did was something different: fire the entrepreneurial spirit in students while assuring them the security of a healthy pay packets even as they try their hands at entrepreneurship.

In its bid to encourage the spirit of entrepreneurship among engineer-managers, Ingersoll Rand this year launched the Entrepreneurship Creation Programme (ECP), meant to foster a culture of innovation and develop skill-sets required for entrepreneurship among young management students and to create businesses for themselves.

This summer at the campus placement season at the two IIMs (Bangalore and Ahmedabad), Ingersoll Rand hired six graduates as ‘Entrepreneur Partners' who will be trained and mentored by the company and placed on a learning path across multiple businesses, markets and functions within the company.

“They would be treated like any other employee with a compensation of Rs 13 lakh a year,” says Mr Venkatesh Valluri, Chairman and President, Ingersoll Rand India.

Value for organisation

The sole criterion for selection was that they should have a desire to create value for their organisation but on their own. The selection process of these graduates was unique and highly competitive, says Mr Valluri.

From about 150 applicants, the company narrowed the list to 30 from each institute. Students had to come prepared with business ideas (the topic was given a week in advance). At this stage, all the participants had to explain their business ideas and how they were going to create the dream Rs 100 crore business in the next few years. In addition, they also had to go through psychometric assessments that tested them for entrepreneurship capability. After the final interview, three students were selected from each of the IIMs for the programme. They are all engineers with management degrees. “Our line of business demands an engineering background,” explains Mr Valluri.

Ingersoll's two-year ECP programme is divided into four modules. In the first six months – the ‘Business Understanding Phase' – they would be rotated across Ingersoll Rand's various businesses and functions for an in-depth understanding of the organisation.

In the second phase, or the ‘Business Insight Phase', trainees would learn to create business and make it financially profitable for a period of six months.

The third phase is the ‘Supported Phase' where students start executing their plans for creating markets and generating sales and solutions. The final phase lasting another six months is the ‘Independent Phase', where young entrepreneurs are ready to create their own infrastructure and operate as independent business owners.

Innovation strategy

Mr Valluri explains that this programme would fit into Ingersoll's plan of making it into a ‘hub and spoke' model where organisational hubs will own the brand, and at the same time the technology, products and the spokes will be driven by entrepreneurs who will create markets by adopting an open innovation strategy with organisational support. The organisation is keen that these students start their ventures in Tier-2 locations in the country as the growth will come from these markets, says Mr Valluri.

Ingersoll Rand is eager to take the programme to other IIMs and Tier-2 management schools next year. Will they wait for the efforts of these employee-entrepreneurs to bear fruit before starting the next batch of ECP? “No, we are confident they will make it big and are planning to carry on the programme next year too.”

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