Entrepreneurship among students is clearly on the rise. A recent GUESS India report highlights that about 14% of students aspire to become entrepreneurs immediately after graduation, and nearly 31% see themselves starting up within five years.
Is there a formula to building a startup? Yes and no. Entrepreneurship isn’t an exact science and the variables are many, and the uncertainty is real. But what we can do is offer directionality: a few practical first steps that increase the probability of survival and success for student founders.
At NSRCEL, through the sector-agnostic Campus Founders program (supported by GPS Renewables) for students and recent graduates, we’ve worked with 80+ ventures and 120+ founders. Here are a few early steps that can bring structure to a student’s entrepreneurial journey.
1. Discover the Right Problem
A problem is the ideal starting point. Even if you begin with an “idea,” it’s worth digging deeper to identify and articulate the real problem you’re solving.
Ask a few fundamental questions, for example—
1. how big is the problem, and how intense is the pain?
2. who is facing this problem most acutely?
3. what are the existing ways your target customer is solving it today?
4. how frequently does the problem show up in their lives or workflow?
The next question is: how do you uncover all of this?
The answer is to immerse yourself in the customer’s world—run quick surveys to get directionality, conduct depth interviews to understand motivations and context, and pay close attention to real user behaviour. Some of the best insights don’t come from what people say, but from what they do: the workarounds they create, the tools they rely on, and the friction they tolerate.
There are also several tools and frameworks that can improve the depth and quality of this process—helping you ask better questions, spot patterns faster, and translate observations into sharper insights.
2. Make early validation count
Once you have discovered a tight set of problem statements to solve for, and have a few potential solutions to solve the problem, we need to validate true customer intent. Time and again, we see founders run “validation” surveys with friends and family. The intent is good, but the sample is often biased—and the insights can be misleading. A stronger sample should reflect your actual target customer and have enough diversity (as relevant) across geography, age, education background, gender, and context of use, so you’re not building on a skewed signal.
Equally important is separating real traction signals from vanity metrics. Not every number means progress. A like on a post, or someone saying “this is a nice idea” is not the same as willingness to pay. A far stronger signal is when a potential customer is willing to invest real effort—time, money, data, access, or internal resources—to try your product. In other words, there’s a big difference between interest and commitment.
3. Build the Bare Minimum
Once you have validated that there is true need for the solution you propose, Build the Bare Minimum. It doesn’t mean “build a shabby product.” In fact, we call it the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), and viable is the key word. It means building the smallest version of your solution that can test your riskiest assumption: will people use it, return to it, and pay for it—before you sink months into features.
For example, a global home-sharing marketplace began with an MVP that was simply one apartment and an air mattress in the founders’ home. This helped them test one core assumption: will strangers actually pay to stay in someone else’s home?
Then they did what didn’t scale. Early on, they noticed listings weren’t converting well because photos were poor. So the founders personally went and took better photos for hosts—an extremely manual, hands-on fix—to increase bookings before building fancy product features.
Once you see traction, you can systematise and scale what worked.
4. Bust the Idea Myth
An idea is not equal to a startup. Several founders hesitate to talk about their ideas, worried someone might “steal” them. But an idea is only a starting point. The real difference between a “cool concept” and a venture is execution: can you turn it into something people genuinely use (and are willing to pay for)?
Also, a startup doesn’t grow in a silo. Sharing what you’re building, with relevant people, often improves your odds of success. It can open doors to networks and introductions, help you validate faster with potential customers, and surface blind spots early
5. Know Yourself and Your Co-Founder
At NSRCEL, the “EL” stands for Entrepreneurial Learning. Our focus is not just the startup, but the entrepreneur behind it. In many ways, the founder and the team is as important, if not more important, than the idea itself.
That’s why it’s worth reflecting early: what are your strengths and weaknesses? Where can you take charge, and where do you need to build an ecosystem of support—through a co-founder, early team members, mentors, or domain experts?
Beyond this, it helps to ask deeper questions: are you the right person (and team) to solve this problem? This is founder–market fit—your proximity to the problem, credibility with the customer, and the unique insight or access that helps you execute faster than others. If you don’t have that fit yet, do you understand what it will take to build it deliberately—by spending time in the customer’s world, partnering with someone who has domain depth, or surrounding yourself with the right advisors and networks?
For example, we often see student founders building in complex areas like SpaceTech. In such sectors, the question isn’t only “is the product feasible/good?”—it’s also “can you build access to the right buyer?” What does it take to build credibility, and access the right decision-makers? What networks can you leverage—and which forums, conferences, and ecosystem events can accelerate access and learning?
To sum it up
These steps are iterative and overlapping in nature. What helps a founder early on is to keep their eyes and ears on the ground, close to customers, and respond to real signals.
(Author Gangotri V Naik is AVP Idea Stage Entrepreneurship & Mentoring, NSRCEL. Views are personal.)
