Part I
Part II
Barely 21 and he's already turned his back on a possible $ 100,000-a-year job. Four venture capital firms still pursue him. Vikas Kedia, a graduate from the Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, is much in demand. He has also created history of sorts in the IIM circuit by starting his own dot-com company in Bangalore.

Vikas Kedia -- one of India's most eligible 'e'ntrepreneurs?

Unlike most Indian entrepreneurs, Kedia has not had to look for office space or facilities so far. He has set up shop in the Rs 130-million business incubator started on the campus of the IIM three months ago. It was set up with a huge donation from N S Raghavan, one of the founders of Infosys Technologies, who retired from service recently.

Interestingly, Raghavan is neither an IIM alumnus, nor has he ever been a guest faculty member. This is the first incubator of its kind in any of the IIMs.

As of now, Kedia is not willing to reveal the name or the precise nature of business that his dot-com company is going to do. He promises to tell all in a fortnight, when he hopes to launch his new company formally.

He has already launched a beta site, the URL of which he refuses to disclose. He says that robots on the Net are testing it now.

According to him, the technology of the company is fully in place. All that remains is for him to decide which venture capitalist or VC to opt for, and then plan his marketing strategy with the funds he gets from them. The only thing he's willing to say about the new company now is that it will do, both, business-to-business or B2B and business-to-consumer or B2C e-commerce.

The company is funded mostly by personal savings. However, he says that various companies are offering him $ 2 million as venture funds.

'An IIM guy has more scope for success than others'

Why are so many firms willing to offer an unknown young e-ntrepreneur so much money? Is it because of his IIM label? The answer is an emphatic "yes".

"They seem to have heard on the circuit that someone from IIM-B is trying to start his own company," says Kedia. "Four or five of them came to me. My opportunity cost for this was a $ 100,000 job in the US. Firms feel that I must be very sure of my idea to be trying to start this company. The possibility of success for an IIM guy, therefore, is much higher than for anyone else. The grooming and network graduates of these institutes have are much appreciated by VCs."

"The IIMs were established to shape Indian entrepreneurial dreams," says Praveen Kumar Choudhary, external relations secretary at IIM-Calcutta. However, hardly any of the IIM graduates have actually become entrepreneurs even at a later stage in their careers. None has ever wanted to bypass the lucrative and exciting jobs on offer to strike out on his own.

'US companies can't find good American MBAs'

"This year's placements in all the IIMs were much better than ever before because companies in the US cannot find good American MBAs willing to join them," says Kedia candidly.

There was an interesting combination of admiration, scepticism and excitement on the faces of the IIM-B students who, a fortnight ago, told of their classmate who had decided to strike out on his own.

"He is even offering us Rs 300,000 a year as starting pay!" they exclaimed, almost incredulously. "Perhaps, if he succeeds, more students would be willing to follow in his footsteps next year."

IIM student offers fellow-students jobs, but finds no takers

Two or three students actually attended interviews at his fledgling company, but nobody accepted Kedia's job offers. He, however, bears no malice towards them.

This is certainly very different from the trend now in the best business schools in the US and elsewhere, where the brightest students have begun starting their own companies. Almost half of the first year students of Stanford Business School never returned to complete their second term last year.

Kedia is the son of a practising lawyer of the Calcutta High Court. He got a bachelor's degree in commerce with honours from the Shriram College of Commerce in Delhi and then a post-graduate diploma in strategic management from IIM-Bangalore.

"I too joined IIM with the idea that it would enable me to get a very good job," he says. "But then, IIM-B gave me a very good opportunity to travel all around the world: I was on an exchange programme in Copenhagen, presented papers in New York and London, and even Switzerland. All this gave me a glimpse of the corporate life I could expect a the end of my two-year stint at IIM. And I didn't like it one bit!"

The idea of becoming an entrepreneur always existed in Kedia's mind. All that was needed was a little push to induce him into taking the plunge immediately, and not after some years. "I'm sure many of my batch-mates too would not mind becoming entrepreneurs," he says.

"It's not that I am all that different from them. It's just that I'm lucky enough as to have the skills and the vision to do what I intend to do now."

Did his classmates laugh at him or were they encouraging? "They are all very intelligent people, and I think deep down inside, they would all love to do what I am doing," says Kedia.

Why didn't more students decide to start their own business, or join Kedia? "Six months down the line, this company will either be a multi-million dollar company, or we will all be looking for other jobs!" laughs Kedia. "Perhaps, they were scared off by the latter possibility!"

Actually, Kedia did apply to two or three companies in early December, but he opted out before they actually interviewed him. Did the training and education he received from IIM help him in this endeavour in any way, as the general perception is that an IIM education equips people to be good managers and service professionals, not entrepreneurs?

"IIM trains people to understand business, not just be good managers," says Kedia.

"Without the help of IIM-B, I would not have come this far with my company," he says. "My professors have helped me refine my business idea, provided me with an office and a telephone." His new company has seven partners including him, and they have also hired some talent now.

They have also just launched their beta site, but Kedia refuses to disclose its URL just now. None of the other six is from any of the IIMs. There is Ashish Gulati, whom Kedia describes as the Linux guru of India, three non-IIM MBAs from Delhi and two others.

Is Kedia very different, then, from his batch-mates at IIM? Are money and job security their main priorities, and excitement or challenge his?

"I think they are looking for stability, and money," says Kedia. "I just want to make a difference in this world. I think they all do, too, but maybe they will find the confidence to do so only five years from now, while I want to do it all now."

Does he consider either his age or inexperience a handicap, and are his classmates being wiser in waiting for a while before they try to jump out on their own? "I think my age and lack of experience are a great advantage," replies Kedia cockily.

"As I have never worked anywhere, I have no preconceived notions about what a company should function like, and just run it the way I want to. I think it's a great advantage to start off with a clean slate, especially when you are trying to do something new."

Part I: Corporates offer dream salaries to tomorrow's managers

Part II: Do corporates view IIM grads as cheap labour?