5 things you should do in your college life if you want to be an entrepreneur

I completed my MBA at IIM Bangalore more than a decade back. It was one of the best decisions of my life. I have visited many MBA / engineering campuses many times since then as part of alumni outreach initiatives - for management fests, orientation programmes, guest lectures, panel discussions etc. Every single time I visit campus, there's only one message that I have for students - make the best use of the time in campus. That's precisely what I did! Here are 5 things that I did which in hindsight have helped me much later in my entrepreneurial life -

1. Get to know all folks in campus - It does not matter whether it's your own batchmates, juniors or seniors. Ashish (my co-founder) and me would know every single one of the folks (it helped that during our time, batch sizes were closer to 180 people only). These folks will become your first customers, well-wishers, investors, employees, etc. And it's proved time and again that all the the folks that we got to know in campus have helped us in abundant ways through our life and became some of our best friends during thick and thin.
2. Participate in extra-curricular activities - I would be part of every single extra-curricular activity in campus - be it full time membership of the management fest and the systems club, in addition to helping in the control room during placements, and helping build the first version of the alumni website, orientation CDs, the cultural festival and many such. Ashish was also pretty much involved in many of these clubs. These clubs gave us the first sense of creating impact for a wider audience. Club activities also help you understand team dynamics and experience multiple disciplines of work. These become useful when you put together your diverse team in your entrepreneurial journey. And for God's sake, please do not be part of a club for adding a resume point!
3. Build something from scratch - It could be an app that's a side project. It could be a social initiative that you are passionate about. It could be a new club that you want to contribute to. It could be getting people together for a cause. It does not matter what it is - but campus offers a great risk-free non judgemental environment to create something from scratch and test it! The real world is much harder :) You would also never get the kind of time that you can create for yourself during your campus days, once you have joined a full fledged job. So utilise the time in campus to create something from scratch and experience the potential highs of what this may provide!
4. Study these subjects well - You learn a bunch of courses in campus. Some hardcore finance and marketing courses. And many specialised courses around retail, market research etc. Some of the generic courses that I believe help me even today after a decade of graduating - (a) Statistics 101 (and using XLS well!) (b) Business plan generation (c) Core marketing - specially segmentation / targeting / positioning (d) Business communication (or making PPTs / writing good emails / presenting in front of an audience) (e) Basic HR courses around people psychology, org building and culture (f) Any course that teaches core negotiation skills. Most of these communication subjects are nowadays taught much earlier even at school, but in case you have not gone through the same, it's never too late to learn!
5. Don't get perturbed about your grades or placements in summers or finals - The bottomline is that you have to fail in something! Whether it's a subject, or not getting your dream job in summers or finals. Put in your best effort surely - but if you don't make the cut for something that you originally believed you totally can nail - the failure may bite hard but is far better handled in campus (with a friends network) than much later in life. So it's OK to get that bit of a heartbreak and not getting your dream job. Life in the following few decades will more than even things out with either the 'batch topper' or the 'batch studs' who cracked i-Banks and consulting placements :) So if you are one of those, that's great. If you are not one of those, that's absolutely fine too! If your end goal is to do something entrepreneurial, any good experience in an internship or job will help you start off and the 'failures' will make you far more resilient.

Much of the above (except maybe (4)) holds for undergraduate courses as well. At the end of the day, make sure you have enough fun doing all of the above. If you are not having fun, then you are anyway losing the plot. Campus days are the best time of your life, before you get to a full fledged job or entrepreneurial journey or whatever else your calling beckons. So make the best use of the same!