An international school fostering entrepreneurship

It’s the prediction on everyone’s lips: half the jobs of the future are not created yet, and today’s students need skills to prepare them for a fast-shifting work culture. So, what are these skills our children need to learn? Educators at GIIS believe entrepreneurship is one that could be a huge advantage.

This year, the school established a unique entrepreneurship boot camp in partnership with professors from the globally acclaimed INSEAD Business School. The hands-on programme for students in Grades 9 to 12 teaches valuable life skills. The structured course starts with ideation concepts and concludes with a real-world investor pitch. Regardless of whether they end up pursuing their business idea, the goal is for students to learn how to make an idea happen.

Rohit Ambekar, Director of Business and Strategy at GIIS, says, “I’ve had a chance to work closely with entrepreneurs and I have realised that entrepreneurial characteristics are not age-specific.” It’s for this reason that participation in workshops like the bootcamp can encourage and nurture an entrepreneurial mindset in students.

And what are some of the business ideas students have dreamed up? Rishi Ganesh Ravichandran proposed an app that can assist construction companies to increase their productivity; another bright student, Siddharth, proposed a healthcare- cum-entertainment app that aims to help people overcome the stresses of daily life using an algorithm that understands users’ behaviours and tendencies.

“Children have always amazed me with their ability to learn and adapt new skills – they are truly like a sponge,” says Rohit Ambekar. “Once exposed to an entrepreneurial environment, they easily form the lifelong habits of curiosity and thinking out of the box. It’s easy to mould and guide students, unlike adults with our fixed habits, views and behaviour patterns.”