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GUESSS India Cloud 2025

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The Largest Student Entrepreneurship
Research Project in India

The Indian Chapter of GUESSS Global

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Who wants to be an
Entrepreneur?

2023 Survey Report | 1st Edition
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GUESSS India Impact

Shaping the future of Student Entrepreneurship
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13000+

Students

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1000+

Institutions

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30+

States

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100+

Campus Ambassadors

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13000+

Students

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1000+

Institutions

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30+

States

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100+

Campus Ambassadors

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Join our Campus
Ambassador Program

Discover the Entrepreneur in you !

Get a chance to win Latest iPad Air + Financial Incentives.

Join our Campus
Ambassador Program

Discover the Entrepreneur in you !

Get a chance to win Latest iPad Air + Financial Incentives.

The Largest Student
Entrepreneurship
Research Project in India

The Indian Chapter of GUESSS Global

GUESSS India Impact

Shaping the future of Student Entrepreneurship

image

3000+

Students

image

1000+

Institutions

image

30+

States

image

100+

Campus
Ambassadors

Who Wants to be an
Entrepreneur ?

2023 Survey Report | First Edition.

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GUESSS India PODCAST

Where Ideas Ignite and Changemakers Emerge

The GUESSS India Podcast, hosted by Dr. Puran Singh and Prerak Sharma, dives into the real stories behind India’s next generation of entrepreneurs. From students daring to dream to educators and enablers shaping innovation, each episode uncovers what it truly takes to build with purpose. This isn’t just about business—it’s about curiosity, courage, and the conversations that spark change.

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GUESSS India 2023 Report

The maiden effort to survey Indian students' Entrepreneurial Spirit
Guess India 2023

This report marks a significant milestone in our journey to understand and foster student entrepreneurship in India.

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33%

Indian Students in process of starting up.​

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4.8%

Indian Students already running an active startup.

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14%

Indian Students planning to Startup after graduation.

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Why GUESSS India?

The primary goal of GUESSS India is to explore and understand the entrepreneurial intentions, attitudes, and behaviours of Indian students. This survey is conducted across the Indian higher educational institutions, encompassing a diverse range of students from various academic disciplines and educational levels.
Student Entrepreneurial Intention

Foster entrepreneurship among Indian students by knowledge and resources for growth

Students Career Choice Intention

Create a knowledge hub to help aspiring student entrepreneurs take their first step toward starting a venture

University Entrepreneurship Climate

Assess the entrepreneurial spirit of Indian students through in-depth research initiatives

Message from the Country Delegate – GUESSS India

Dr. Puran Singh

Country Delegate, GUESSS India

GUESSS India, the country chapter of the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey, is dedicated to advancing student entrepreneurship through research, surveys, and knowledge sharing. Our mission is to capture the spirit, aspirations, and challenges of student entrepreneurs while providing valuable insights for educators, policymakers, and industry leaders. We aim to build an inclusive ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurial thinking and action among students. With the support of students, faculty, partners, and collaborators, we strive to strengthen India’s entrepreneurial landscape and shape the future of its next generation of innovators.

Guess Cloud

A knowledge hub for Student Entrepreneurship

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Transform Classroom into Venture Space, Students into Entrepreneurs: Insights from a Pedagogical Experiment

In this article, Prof. Aparna Rao shares a powerful classroom experiment where MBA students read and sold Gandhi’s autobiography, managing real-world sales, logistics, and marketing. The project fostered entrepreneurial thinking, teamwork, and self-efficacy, demonstrating how experiential learning can effectively transform students into entrepreneurs....

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Understanding Team Dynamics in Student Startups

Neha Jaswal highlights the often-overlooked challenge of team dynamics in student startups, revealing how early enthusiasm gives way to instability—and why building aligned, committed teams is crucial for venture success....

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What’s Holding Back Student Entrepreneurs? A Closer Look at the Tech-First Trap

Hari Babu underscores the tech-first mindset of students that often leads to creating solutions in search of a problem, emphasizing the need for a user-first approach in entrepreneurship....

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Campus Ambassador Program

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The GUESSS India Campus Ambassador Program is live! It is a unique opportunity for students to develop leadership skills, get entrepreneurial exposure and connect with a vibrant community of changemakers.
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Frequently Asked Questions

The GUESSS India is a comprehensive survey on student entrepreneurship across India, conducted as part of the Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students’ Survey (GUESSS) initiative. It provides insights into the entrepreneurial intentions, activities, and perceptions of Indian students, benchmarking them against global peers.

The GUESSS survey is conducted biennially (every two years), allowing for longitudinal analysis to track changes in entrepreneurial intentions and activities over time. The next round of the GUESSS India Survey is scheduled for 2025, providing opportunities to observe trends and developments in student entrepreneurship.
GUESSS (Global University Entrepreneurial Spirit Students Survey) is a biennial global research project initiated by the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, in 2003. It aims to understand entrepreneurial intent, behavior, and influencing factors among students worldwide. In 2023, 57 countries participated in the survey, collecting data from more than 300,000 students.
GUESSS Cloud is a dedicated knowledge repository addressing key issues relevant to student entrepreneurship in India. It serves as a platform to generate knowledge that inspires entrepreneurial action, equipping students with insights, research, and expert opinions.
The GUESSS India 2023 Survey received responses from 13,896 students across 1298 higher education institutions in India, making it one of the most comprehensive studies on student entrepreneurship in the country.
The GUESSS India 2023 Survey was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed to students across 156 higher education institutions in India. The survey covered a wide range of questions aimed at understanding students’ career intentions, entrepreneurial activities, and perceptions of their university’s entrepreneurship climate.
The survey primarily targeted the Top 100 Institutions from the NIRF 2023 Innovation Category and 88 Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs). Additionally, several other higher educational institutions were included in the survey. Overall, students enrolled in 1298 Indian institutions provided their responses for the survey. The coverage includes universities, technical institutes, colleges, and other higher education establishments, ensuring a diverse representation of students from various academic backgrounds.
The survey utilized an online questionnaire distributed via institutional networks, social media channels, and strategic partners who had direct communication with Indian students. A network of on campus Campus-Ambassadors was leveraged by the survey team. The questionnaire consisted of a mix of multiple-choice questions, and Likert-scale rating questions to capture the data.
Students were classified as nascent entrepreneurs if they were in the process of starting a venture but had not yet generated consistent revenue for more than three months. Active entrepreneurs are those whose ventures have moved beyond the nascent stage and have been operational long enough to generate revenue and/or pay wages for at least three months.
The survey’s sample includes students from a diverse range of academic institutions, regions, and fields of study, ensuring that the data reflects the variety of experiences within India’s student population. The inclusion of both undergraduate and postgraduate students, across different types of institutions, helps provide a broad and representative dataset.
The report provides a detailed analysis of student entrepreneurial aspirations, highlighting opportunities and challenges in nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs in India. It helps universities, incubators, policymakers, and investors understand key trends and areas where more support is needed to turn entrepreneurial intent into successful ventures.
India ranks highly in terms of entrepreneurial intent and nascent venture activity among top startup economies. However, it lags behind its global peers, such as the US and Germany, in terms of active ventures – students running revenue-generating businesses. This reflects a strong entrepreneurial pipeline but also indicates the need for enhanced support to bridge the gap between intent and execution.
The report highlights the crucial role universities play in fostering entrepreneurship among students. It reveals that 63% of student entrepreneurs receive university support, and students rate the university entrepreneurship climate in India as highly positive (4.7/7). The findings offer universities a roadmap for enhancing their entrepreneurship curricula, programs, and incubation facilities to better support student ventures.
The report demonstrates the vast potential of India’s student entrepreneurs to contribute to the country’s startup ecosystem. With nearly one-third of students aspiring to become entrepreneurs within five years, the findings highlight the need for continued investment in education, incubation, and policy support to cultivate the next generation of successful founders.

The full report will be available for download following the official launch at ISBAcon 2024 in Hyderabad on October 18, 2024. For more information or to get a copy of the report, please visit www.guesssindia.in

Guesss India 2023 - Report
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GUESSS India 2023 Report

Guesss India 2023 - Report
This report marks a significant milestone in our journey to understand and foster student entrepreneurship in India.