Fempreneur 2023

Ankita Parashar co-leads the Enterprise India Fellowship where she has co-created an innovative consulting project model that creates a meaningful way for students to engage with the industry, to try and address the gap between industry and education.The model involves facilitating consulting projects for small businesses and startups and empowering students to build different competencies by working on solving real problems faced by business leaders and entrepreneurs.Ankita leads this process of facilitating projects for clients and students based on her rich consulting background of working with 40+ companies across several industries over the last 9 years.There is a huge talent gap in the industry, especially among small and medium size businesses which make up about 80% of the Indian Economy.One of the reasons why is that college-age students in India are confused (re career aspirations), lack self-awareness and are not life/ work ready (aka having practical exposure, soft skills, emotional intelligence, ability to express thoughts & share about their work in writing/speech, ready to grab opportunities). The established practices of 1) just measuring academic progress, 2) the education system’s low focus on self-awareness, 3) students doing time-pass beyond the 3-5 hours of college, 4) lack of meaningful ways for students to engage with the industry and 5) scarcity mindset among parents and students; feed into the problem.The Enterprise India Fellowship was launched to challenge these practices.The Enterprise India Fellowship (EIF)- a part time customizable program to complement formal education and to help college-age students develop business acumen, build self-awareness and become life/work ready. EIF comprises of 1) consulting projects that students get to work on with entrepreneurs and business leaders where they get to engage meaningfully and work on real problems that organizations have to deal with 2) weekly workshops on different business frameworks that they will apply in the projects 3) 1:1 coaching and reflective processes to help students find the kind of opportunities they want 4) spaces to connect and network with enterprising people from different fields 5) mentorship for startup ideas 6) a hybrid space- best of both worlds- intimate in-person facilitated spaces, and cutting edge online spaces and collaborative tools - Discord, Zoom, Miro, Jamboard and more!The consulting projects are at the heart of the Fellowship, and Ankita leads a team of business consultants who she guides to facilitate the project outcomes for the clients and learning objectives for the students. She is a mentor to the students and a strategic thinking partner to the clients.Parallelly, they have multiple calls with Ankita to discuss their intended growth areas and learnings thorough the projects.The 1:5 team member to student ratio is the indication of the depth and customizability of support that each student receives.It was a Pune based program- moved online in 2020, so now it’s replicable and customizable for students across the country.Over the last 4 years, the EIF has worked with 19+ clients (across industries- from drone to construction, mental health to manufacturing, social sector to tech) and 63 students from 11 cities and 15 different streams.Each student spends 380-400 hours working on 4-5 consulting projects with organizations from various industries with coaching from Ankita and the Enterprise Team.