More than one in five Indian college students has already started a business, while 43% aspire to become entrepreneurs, broadly in line with global averages, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi.
However, the report has flagged gaps in converting ambition into viable ventures, stating that “half of Indian students know no entrepreneur beyond their parents”, while also flagging limited exposure to entrepreneurs, low early sales and weaker follow-through among women, and calling on universities to prioritise actual business creation over entrepreneurship plans and competitions.
The GUESSS India 2025 report, titled ‘How do we make student entrepreneurs?’, is based on responses from 25,783 students across more than 1,200 higher education institutions in 34 states and Union Territories (UTs). It found that 22% of Indian students had already started a business, compared with 23% globally, while 43% in both the Indian and global samples aspired to entrepreneurship.
GUESSS India is part of the biennial Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey (GUESSS), launched by the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, in 2003 to study students’ entrepreneurial ambitions, activities and influencing factors. The global survey drew more than 300,000 students from 57 countries in 2023.
GUESSS India provides insights into the entrepreneurial intentions, activities and perceptions of Indian students, benchmarking them against global peers. The 2025 India survey was conducted between September and December.
The findings
Released by IIT Mandi in partnership with Bengaluru-based REVA University, the survey found that 35.5% of Indian student businesses had recorded regular sales, compared with 33% globally. Nearly 31% of Indian student businesses with regular sales were founded in 2025, against 18% globally.
“India's students are as ambitious as any in the world, and those who start are building real businesses that already hire people,” said Dr Puran Singh, associate professor at IIT Mandi's School of Management and country delegate for GUESSS India, who led the report.
The findings also point to a shift in career preferences. The proportion of students wanting to run their own businesses immediately after graduation rose from 14% in 2023 to 16.2% in 2025. Over the same period, the share aspiring to government jobs fell from 12.7% to 10.1%, while the share seeking jobs at large companies declined from 31.3% to 27.4%.
However, the report found a gap between students' business plans and the ventures they actually operate. While information technology, artificial intelligence and digital businesses were among the most common entrepreneurial plans, only about one in 10 existing student-run businesses was digital.
Exposure to entrepreneurship was another key factor. Students with entrepreneurs among their relatives, friends, classmates or teachers were three times more likely to start a venture. Yet half of Indian students surveyed said they did not know any entrepreneur beyond their parents, compared with about one-third globally.
The survey also found that among students still developing their ventures, only 10% had made their first sale, compared with 23% globally. Repeat entrepreneurship, however, was more common in India: 41% of founders of student businesses with regular sales had closed an earlier venture and started another, against 33% globally. Meanwhile, 42% of Indian student entrepreneurs ran two or more businesses, compared with 25% worldwide.
Women expressed entrepreneurial ambitions almost as frequently as men but were less likely to act on them. Among students who wanted to start a business, 45% of women had begun one, compared with 53% of men.
Suggestions for universities
The report called on universities to track how many students translate entrepreneurial ambitions into actual businesses, rather than measuring interest alone. It said 51 out of every 100 students who wanted to start a business had done so. It also recommended that universities bring alumni entrepreneurs, faculty founders and student business owners into classrooms and hostels, and prioritise first sales, registrations and prototypes over business-plan competitions.
“A university's task is no longer only to educate students for jobs. It is to educate them for enterprise, so that they create the jobs,” said Dr P Shyama Raju, chancellor of REVA University, the national partner for the survey.
“Student entrepreneurship is central to how the School of Management thinks about management education: we want our students to build ventures and organisations, not only to manage them,” said Prof Anjan Swain, chair of IIT Mandi's School of Management.