Mekin Maheshwari

Entrepreneurial mindset education is increasingly positioned as a powerful learning experience for students worldwide to engage with critical competencies of work-readiness. India, with one of the largest working age populations in the world, has the perfect opportunity to leapfrog. Through his organisation Udhyam, Mekin Maheshwari has been building an “entrepreneurial mindset” movement within the country, helping to change systems, culture and mindset for India to become an entrepreneurially skilled society.

Developing an entrepreneurial mindset can lead to transformational agency, yet this has been under leveraged, particularly for youth in developing economies. Entrepreneurial mindset education, particularly through problem solving ideas and experiential learning approaches, leads to mindsets and competencies that are critical for entrepreneurship while also leading to students becoming entrepreneurial in decision making for personal growth and societal changes.

While India has a demographic advantage, with 67% of its population considered working age, Mekin observed that families in low to middle-economic backgrounds were most impacted by unemployment and the lack of opportunities to upskill themselves and continue to remain in poverty. Mekin realized that entrepreneurial ability as a skillset had never been introduced to underprivileged communities (especially at a school level) and that it had the potential to solve the urgent problem of unemployment while encouraging societies to solve a lot of their own problems within the country. He set out to incorporate entrepreneurial mindset education as part of the formal education system to make this an essential part of growing up and something seen as fun and sought-after. To bring this new idea to Indian culture and society, Mekin founded Udhyam, an organisation to work with large education networks such as the government school education system to introduce his idea to scale.

In the very beginning itself, Mekin started demonstrating and making inroads by introducing entrepreneurship classes during summer vacations at various government schools, encouraging students to pick real-world problems and solve them as part of the program. One of his programs, known as Udhyam Shiksha, focused on imparting skills to identify and solve a problem as part of the entrepreneurial mindset curriculum. It also addressed challenges faced by teachers, enabling them to support students to become entrepreneurial and created a mechanism to provide small seed funds to students to convert ideas into business in some states. These ideas were picked up initially by all the schools of the Delhi Government and subsequently the India Government leading to the replication of the EMC curriculum in 12 states of India reaching millions of children and hundreds of thousands of teachers and parents. Udhyam Shiksha has a technology system for officials across various levels of the Education Ministry and the government schooling system to give clear visibility on the progress made by students in each state, helping show the quantifiable impact made by Mekin’s system. After rolling out his program to all the schools of the Delhi State Government, Mekin was invited by other state governments to help develop his work within their education system. Soon it caught the attention of the Education Ministry of India, and they approached him to create the Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum (EMC) and integrate it with the academic curriculum in government schools in various states.

Mekin’s focus then shifted towards changing the mindset of the working-class population in India, to redefine how they perceive success in life beyond the job opportunities presented to them in the country. He identified that this mindset gap resulted from the design of the existing education system which did not adapt to changing requirements of the world. The impact of this mindset gap is not limited to the student population, but also across adults belonging to the working class. 94% of the parents of children in government schools earn below the minimum average wage in India, which is around $2 per day. Mekin realized that to solve for the mindset gap for young people, he also had to enable the low- and middle-income adults with tools and skills to build their own businesses/entrepreneurial ideas and not rely on job opportunities to get out of poverty. In addition to his efforts within schools through Udhyam Shiksha, he developed Udhyam Vyapaar (a word for business in Hindi).

Through Udhyam, Mekin has developed a unique approach in the country to address the urgent problem of unemployment for the burgeoning low to middle-income working age population. The entrepreneurial potential of this huge segment of the Indian population has been underutilized and solving poverty through skilling them in an entrepreneurial mindset had never been explored before Mekin. He created a mindset shift among the working-class population to view entrepreneurship as a tool to improve their lives, and his impact ranges from school children up to adults belonging to the same economic background. Mekin’s impact also has a multiplier effect as students who acquire entrepreneurial skills at school graduate and become business owners who join the larger network of small-scale business owners that Udhyam supports.

Mekin is essentially building an “entrepreneurial mindset revolution” in India to spur economic growth, starting with an educational process that nurtures entrepreneurial individuals who can cope with the increased uncertainties that prevail in the globalized society we inhabit. The uniqueness and power of his idea also lies in weaving a huge network of nano grassroots entrepreneurs whose mindset has been successfully shifted, and who find joy in building their own enterprises and becoming successful in life. Mekin is leveraging his network of successful innovators and professionals and their collective network and skills to support children and adults of low to middle-income families in India, helping them become independent job creators and build a successful life on their own terms.

Over the decades, Indian students have experienced very academic and theoretical schooling with very little connection or relevance to their daily lives. Very few continue formal education after K-12 with an overall gross enrolment ratio for higher education at only 9% of the total population (Indian Ministry of Education, 2022). Higher secondary school education is therefore a critical juncture for interventional education as this is, for a large percentage of the population, the last step in formalized schooling.

In India, the education model evolved in the pre-independent period, and under British rule education was a means of training the population for taking up salaried assembly level jobs. This system inherently limits the capacity of students to be creative and become problem solvers. The world has evolved so much, but the education system has not evolved even at a fraction of the change in trends. The larger education system was trying to fix the “symptoms” of the problem rather than addressing the root cause. Entrepreneurship as a skillset did not have a place in the educational system which kept looking for salaried opportunities as the only possible result of education and a parameter for measuring success of students in the system.

Mekin observed that the Indian education system over the years has been a “rejection system”, since the education system literally rejects 93% to 95% of its learners on the flawed definition of success in growing up. Success can mean different things to different people, but the education system defines success as job success alone. Yet these opportunities are only available for the top 5-7% students and these opportunities aren't growing fast enough to keep up with demand. Moreover, these opportunities primarily go to the rich and the privileged. Mekin wanted to address this huge gap and make the situation more equitable. But he also wanted to tackle the far more fundamental challenge – in how success is defined for a student. Mekin sees the opportunity to step in here to redefine the definition of success in growing up and not limit it to the ability to get a salaried job as the end-goal of education, by building skills to be entrepreneurial and self-reliant.

Mekin also noted that there were challenges within the broader community from where the students came from. This insight came from the fact that most children who find it the hardest to find salaried jobs belong to families whose parents earn less the minimum average wages or run micro- and nano-businesses, accounting to 85% of India’s population. Nano-businesses typically earn $400 as monthly revenue and employ one or two individuals, mostly belonging to the migrant population. These enterprises make up the biggest chunk of India’s employment base, although 95% of these small to nano-enterprises are unregistered and operate without licenses, accept payment only in cash, and typically consist of street side shops, pop up stores, or moving vendors. Mekin realised there is a huge need to help these entrepreneurs to learn about being entrepreneurial, to come up with new ideas, to formalise their businesses, and leverage new approaches and technology.

Helping very small business owners to start their entrepreneurial mindset has a direct implication on how they encourage their young children to learn and experiment with entrepreneurial ideas early in their lives. Through his work Mekin realised that in every state, 95% of the parents of children going to government schools belonged to this category, in addition to their relatives, neighbors and larger community networks. These individuals are part of unorganized networks who engage in neighborhood micro-financing, belonging to the same geographic locality, who form well connected social groups and networks formed based on business type. When the students graduate, they step into the same cycle of non-entrepreneurial business setting. To break the generational cycle, Mekin began to address not just the students, but the network of adults they bring in, with entrepreneurial education and support.

Only roughly 7% of the working age population of India has access to paid salaried opportunities, and it is estimated that by 2030, India will need to generate over 100 million job opportunities to provide opportunities to the majority of the population in the working age group. Mekin looked at the scenario and became convinced that it would be near impossible to create employment opportunities for everyone if the current education system and approaches prevail, identifying a major opportunity to leverage building an entrepreneurial mindset as a tool to enable the low-income population to get out of poverty.

To shift how students view success as they grow up and help them achieve a sense of accomplishment without depending solely on salaried job opportunities, Mekin realized he has to fix not only the education system but also the culture of various stakeholders involved, specifically focusing on young people aged 14- to 18- years old. The lack of meaningful employment opportunity is acutely faced by the low-income segment of the population, yet no one has taken steps to empower this segment with entrepreneurial mindset skills to make them independent. Around 55% of school-age children in India go to government schools (no fee or low fee schools, around $20 per month), 40% go to affordable private schools (fees less than $35 per month), and only 5% of children go to premium private schools. To create a generational mindset shift, Mekin recognized that he should focus his attention on government and affordable private school students to reach the majority of the student population of India.

In the beginning stages, Mekin’s Udhyam Foundation ran entrepreneurial programs in these schools during their summer break, teaching essential skills and connecting education to real world problem solving. Students went back to their communities and picked up problems they faced in their daily lives and innovated simple solutions to solve the problem. Mekin and his team created a system which helped the students in converting these ideas into ventures, in a fun and engaging way. Mekin strongly believes learning should be as fun as playing in the playground and his learning methodology and programs embodied this idea.

It was in this context that Udhyam helped the Delhi Government begin the Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum (EMC) for students in Grades 9-12. The curriculum was piloted in 300 classrooms across 24 schools and was subsequently launched in all 1000+ schools. EMC aims to build entrepreneurial acumen, and harness talents and capabilities, to help students take charge of their careers and fulfil their dreams. A key component of EMC is the Business Blasters programme for students. Under this, students work in teams to conceptualise and implement a business idea (for profit or social impact). Through this, the programme seeks to build the entrepreneurial mindsets of students. Mekin defines mindsets as a person’s way of thinking and a set of opinions which predetermine their interpretations and responses to events, circumstances, and situations. An entrepreneurial mindset is one where the individual dreams big, tries new and challenging goals, recognises and leverages opportunities, plans and executes them to bring them to fruition, and overcomes and learns from setbacks. This allows them to succeed in a variety of settings.

Similarly, Mekin started the summer program in low-cost private schools in Bangalore. He approached schools and other leaders in the education space to join him to create an activity-based learning experience for the students to ideate, build solutions, and launch ventures. The initial prototypes in Delhi and Bangalore led to government education officials reaching out to Mekin to help them integrate entrepreneurial mindset education into their academic curriculum. After five years of working with schools and developing robust methodology, he started focusing on integrating his ideas for replication across India through the Education Ministry. Through his organisation he institutionalised his efforts and created a formal Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum, that brings entrepreneurial education to the official academic curriculum of government schools in India.

Udhyam Shiksha is the vertical of his organisation that works with the education system and institutions keen to replicate his idea. They developed the curriculum to help with the fundamental aspects of entrepreneurial mindset development in a fun and engaging way at schools and facilitate execution of real-world ventures as part of the curriculum. Four stages of the methodology comprise of:

1. EMC in the classroom:
● Standalone classes for 30-40 minutes held daily
● Teachers, acting as facilitators, use class-specific EMC manuals
● Classes have an activity or story from the manual, and activity reflections
● Saturdays include special student classes where students lead activities such as impromptu speeches and debates

2. Micro Research Project
● Students conduct this each month before or after school hours
● Each student interviews 10 neighbors or relatives employed in different jobs or businesses

3. Field Venture
a. Teachers divide grade 11 and 12 students into groups of 5-6 students
b. Students pool their seed money of INR 1000, awarded to them by the government, to implement their entrepreneurship ideas

4. Live Entrepreneurship Interactions
● Schools invite entrepreneurs to motivate students in their schools and to answer questions about students’ chosen career paths

At an individual level, students start engaging with Udhyam’s methodology at the age of 14 years, learning entrepreneurship and building on ideas for three to four years before they graduate from school. Around 28% of the students who go through his curriculum become full time entrepreneurs right after school – a figure he aims to increase to 70% to deepen impact. Udhyam selects one teacher per school as an entrepreneurship coordinator. They are provided with additional incubation and network support through an alumni program called Udhyam Sarvo. In some states like Delhi, Udhyam arranges INR 2000 ($23) per student as seed funding for their ideas through a program ‘Business Blasters’ which has supported over 300 thousand students so far. Udhyam Shiksha now operates in schools across 12 states reaching over 30 million students, with 400,000 new students every year. Udhyam also has developed and provides a decentralized dashboard system, enabling district officers, state education departments, school principals and other stakeholders to analyze data on challenges faced by coordinator teachers, with tools to track student idea submissions and insights across various levels. Through this system, over 27,000 feedback and improvisation comments on specific chapters, challenges, and activities have been collected from teachers and routed to the research team for actionable analysis. From the government, the officials have a transparent view into metrics that indicate the activities, business interest, and innovativeness of students in their district or state.

Most of the students Mekin supports are first generation school-goers, with their parents belonging to the largest economic segment of India – the lower to middle economic classes. Nano-business owners, a major part of these economic classes, have an average monthly income below 20,000 INR (around $250) and usually generate sporadic income from their businesses. This program focuses on enabling nano businesses with skills, technology and ecosystems to grow their businesses and be more open to new ideas. Udhyam Vyapaar has so far helped existing nano business owners such as those who run independent cloth ironing services in push carts to formalize their businesses, refine their operations and become more sustainable and grow their business. These nano entrepreneurs typically earned between $58 to $200 per month and Mekin’s intervention showed immediate results by improving their earnings by around 30%. Similarly, Udhyam Vyapaar also helped nano entrepreneurs in food businesses, who typically run makeshift kiosks on the roadside, selling and delivering food. These businesses have been guided to acquire licenses and digitize their businesses to improve their reach and scale up. The Udhyam Shiksha (Education) and Udhyam Vyapaar (Business) feed into each other and the goal with Udhyam Vyapar is also to create a mindset shift in parents who are not in formal jobs, so they can experience the power of entrepreneurial mindset in real monetary value.

Mekin runs Udhyam Vyapaar to transform these nano-businesses’ ideas and profits, by improving their methodology, operations, technology use, and skills of the founder. For instance, one of their initial programs under Udhyam Vyapaar – ISTRI – focused on business owners running ironing outlets and services in major cities across India. These businesses, found in every neighborhood across India, primarily used coal-based iron boxes; this key asset of their business has not evolved from the 19th century. Udhyam Vyaapar’s ISTRI program provided them with insights and how-tos on alternate and environmentally friendly technology, reducing their use of coal and improving their revenue by on average 27%.

Each of the nano-enterprises which are labor and skill oriented, like the businessperson, are connected through semi-informal networks. Mekin taps into these networks to reach more segments of nano-businesses. Having built the initial system, Mekin’s turnaround time for scaling to new segments is quite low. Another example is “New Solutions” which is a similar program launched by Udhyam to support street side food vendors with technology and platform access, improved operations, and procurement of licenses and registrations, generating more orders and improving their revenue through online orders. Similarly, the Rural Women Entrepreneurship program is an intervention to support women entrepreneurs with knowledge, skills and business incubation, in partnership with state governments, currently impacting thousands of women. These women entrepreneurs are reached through neighborhood self-help groups and community centers where after-school programs are generally run.

Mekin’s strategy has government schools as the primary aggregator. Students and the network of adults they bring (parents, relatives, neighbors, community) are Mekin’s target segment, combining both arms of Udhyam and creating a multiplier effect through the school networks. With the fun and sticky nature of EMC, state governments experience the transformation and volume of acceptance among students, which leads to rapid implementation across the state schools. Seeing a huge opportunity to serve the poor segment in the most sustainable way, Mekin’s interventions for the nano businesses also operate with similar rapid expansion. Addressing the same segment of population in each state, Mekin reduces the turnaround time for establishing base at a state by implementing his approach and how-tos and by leveraging aggregator networks that are either the government or labor networks.

Reflecting on the problem statement and analyzing a lot of data in the process, Mekin realized that to initiate changemaking, a changemaker must create a new normal and work with the government to scale it well. The initiative had to be either run with the biggest networks and systems such as the government education system as in the case of Shiksha, or the market takes it up, like in the case of Vyapaar. Only then would the initiative transcend beyond founders and organizations. Mekin follows the method of build-operate-transfer to create systems and pass it on for the larger networks for effective replication. In the same space of innovation, Mekin is also collaborating with other social entrepreneurs and innovators, joining in with individuals who inspire them which is part of his Theory of Change and Self-correcting decision-making architecture.

In his early childhood, Mekin experienced moving out of his large joint-family home – where he was surrounded by cousins, grandparents and an extended family in a single household – into a nuclear family household, when his father migrated to new cities for work. He grew up with different cultures and got a flavor of diverse life experiences in various Indian cities. During these years, Mekin learnt to thrive in new environments but also saw several injustices and discrimination at close range.

Mekin began experimenting with educational solutions early on. In university, he recognized some major gaps in the learning space in his academic institution and proposed a college festival to the Vice Chairman of his college. Working with the management, he put together a first of its kind college fest, a very strong indicator of his ability to take initiative. In his pre-final year of the college, he also developed and led a comprehensive placement process for his college seniors (final year students) and ran the placement cell for the college, which was responsible for creating job placements for the final year students.

After a few initial job stints post college, Mekin joined as one of the very early employees of Flipkart – then a startup, which eventually grew to be India’s largest homegrown e-commerce platform on par with Amazon. Mekin became one of the founding team members of the technology behemoth and grew very rapidly in rank to become one of the top leaders in the company – Chief of People & Staff – building the entire system and leading a team of 50,000 employees across India, at a very young age. His growth was phenomenal, and his professional success was unparalleled to the rest of his peers.

In one of the board meetings of Flipkart, upon encountering a question about how the next five years of the company would look like, Mekin reflected internally that he could not see himself leading the corporate giant anymore. As part of his job leading people and classifying data and numbers, he had also realized the myriad challenges in the country and especially that the state of education in the country had not evolved at the same pace as the economy. He also noticed that getting salaried jobs was often seen as the end-goal of education, though there were not enough jobs to engage the youth of the most populated country on the planet. He realized and researched that not many interventions at scale were attempting this unique but very important challenge and decided to move out of his startup career to solve this problem for the country. As a person, Mekin derives joy from seeing people succeed, which was a stronger reason for Mekin to step into the space of entrepreneurial mindset culture building and re-imagining the experience of growing up for young ones.

Mekin did not want to dive in directly. Instead, he chose to take a gap year and spend time visiting lots of places, meeting hundreds of people and social entrepreneurs, including Ashoka Fellows, who work in the area of education in different parts of the country to learn more about different ideas which have worked at scale. He often leveraged his network to meet the first relevant person and then would request that person to refer him to more influential and experienced people in their networks – a mechanism he still uses to grow his connections and networks and a trait in most successful entrepreneurs. At times he spoke with founders, other times he interacted directly with the stakeholders.

By 2015, Mekin had spent enough time immersed in his own research of the problem he set out to solve. He then created Udhyam, with the mission to make everyone develop an entrepreneurial mindset where every individual feels empowered to define their own path. Mekin designed Udhyam to work on changing the mindset of 85 percent of India’s population by getting his ideas replicated by the state governments who were responsible for the public education system.