GURGAON: Haryana’s govt school students are no longer just preparing for exams, but learning how to build, fail, adapt and try again — while still in school.“Entrepreneurship should never be seen as a last option. We want students to move from being job seekers to job creators,” said Haryana education minister Mahipal Dhanda, while referring to the state-level Yuva Startup Mahotsav, where govt school students presented businesses they built themselves under Haryana’s Kushal Business Challenge (KBC).At Yuva Startup Mahotsav, which looked like a college start-up expo, at one stall, students spoke about how kitchen waste could heal tired soil. At another, teenagers explained how they sold products across Amazon and Flipkart without owning inventory. Nearby, colourful hand-dyed fabrics shared space with organic fertiliser made from poultry waste.All these ventures came together on Jan 5 at the Indradhanush Auditorium in Panchkula, where Yuva Startup Mahotsav marked the culmination of KBC 2.0 with live stalls and certificate distribution.Implemented by the department of school education — along with HSSPP, SCERT and Udhyam Learning Foundation — KBC was designed to move business education beyond theory.The initiative behind these ventures began last year as a pilot experiment and was formally rolled out in Oct 2024 for Class 11 and 12 students, particularly those in vocational streams, with the aim of introducing entrepreneurship before students left school.In KBC 2.0 alone, more than 25,000 students from 1,062 schools formed 5,640 teams and developed over 5,000 business ideas. These went through multiple rounds — school, block and two district levels — before 66 teams reached the state summit, each receiving Rs 1 lakh in seed funding. Overall, the programme now reached 1.18 lakh students across more than 2,500 govt schools.With Dhanda announcing the expansion of the KBC to Classes 9 to 12 from the next academic session, officials stress that the goal is not to push every student into business immediately after school.“KBC represents a shift towards experiential learning, where students apply classroom concepts to real-world challenges and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills,” said Vineet Garg, IAS, additional chief secretary, school education.Instead of preparing file-based projects, students are required to identify real problems in their surroundings, design solutions, test them in local markets, interact with customers, handle pricing and costs, face rejection and then refine their ideas based on feedback.“The programme has been structured as a multi-level journey with strong mentoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure quality and scalability,” said Jitender Kumar, IAS, state project director.The approach proved impactful enough for the programme to be mentioned in the chief minister’s budget speech this year, marking its transition from a pilot to a flagship state initiative.Explaining the thinking behind the initiative — KBC — Myank Verma, joint state project director, department of school education, said, “We use business ideas as a tool to teach entrepreneurship. Students are not just reading about economics anymore. They are learning production, logistics, supply chains, raw material sourcing and market analysis by actually doing it.”He added that the curriculum exposes students to the full start-up ecosystem, including taxation, revenue projections, angel investors and incubators, so that by the end of the programme they can judge whether an idea is economically viable.One of the most talked-about projects came from Gurgaon’s GMSSSS Badshahpur (Govt Model Sanskriti Senior Secondary School, Badshapur). The students behind Resoil Organics said the idea grew from what they saw around them every day. Fields were increasingly dependent on chemical fertilisers, soil health was declining, and yet organic waste from homes and communities was being dumped as useless. Through the KBC, they were pushed to question this contradiction. The result was a venture that converts organic waste into natural fertilisers and promotes vermicomposting through simple awareness kits. What began as a classroom exercise now turned into a live effort to reduce chemical use and encourage people to care for soil as a living resource.In Rewari, Nitil Saini of GSSS took a more local problem and turned it into Nature Goals. He noticed that while people wanted their home gardens to thrive, good fertiliser was expensive and poultry farms nearby were struggling to manage waste. By connecting the two, he started converting poultry waste into clean, affordable organic fertiliser for balcony gardeners, nurseries and schools. Starting small to maintain quality, Nature Goals gradually found customers through word of mouth. The venture earned Rs 54,000 so far and its products are now used in homes, schools and community gardens across the district.For Abhishek, a student of GMSSSS Indachhoi in Fatehabad, the problem was about access rather than agriculture. He saw local sellers and students remain disconnected from online markets even as global e-commerce platforms grew rapidly. Through KBC, he learned how supply chains, logistics and digital marketplaces function. This led to Balaji Mart, a dropshipping venture that sources products in bulk and sells them through platforms like Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho, while also managing offline bulk orders. The business generated Rs 90,000 in revenue and, more importantly, earned a one-year incubation at IIT Ropar, giving the student team exposure to expert mentoring and scaling strategies.In Ambala, students from GMSSSS Mohri Bhanokheri focused on farming. Watching farmers spend more every season while soil quality worsened, they began revisiting traditional agricultural practices through the programme. Their idea, Eco Farm Crate, brings together natural inputs such as Jeevamrit, Beejamrit, compost and plant-protection solutions in one kit, making natural farming easier for farmers, terrace gardeners, kitchen gardens and schools. The project was selected among the top 66 ventures at the state level and received Rs 1 lakh in seed funding.Cultural roots also found expression through entrepreneurship. In Hisar, students of GGSSS Aryanagar launched Rang Riwaz, inspired by the tie-and-dye tradition they grew up with. Working from home using eco-friendly dyes, they began producing customised suits, sarees, dupattas and home furnishings. The venture already generated Rs 40,000 in revenue and received seed funding, showing how traditional skills can translate into modern student-run businesses.To maintain quality, the department introduced a rigorous four-level assessment process, starting at the school level with principal-led juries and moving through block and district rounds where industry experts and MSME officials question students on scalability and business fundamentals.“We ask them tough questions: how they would scale production a thousand times, what investment they would need, how many people they would employ,” Verma said.The programme is integrated into the vocational education framework taught from Classes 9 to 12, with extensive training provided to teachers and principals to ensure they understand the intent behind it.Financial support is matched with mentorship, with winning teams receiving Rs 1 lakh in stages and guidance from the skill development department and NGOs like Udhyam to turn early ideas into workable business plans.
