Entrepreneurship & Business | Startup to the End Game

About the course

The term “unicorn” is used to describe startups with a valuation of over $1 billion. Today, there are more than 100 Indian startups who are referred to as unicorns. But the question is how did they get there?

Zomato started as Foodiebay – an online directory of restaurant menus that the founder created to make ordering food easier for his colleagues at his workplace in Delhi. Zepto started as Kiranakart – an online platform that could deliver groceries within 10 minutes from nearby Kirana stores in Mumbai during the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic. Meesho started as Fashnear – an on-demand fashion delivery service that could deliver clothes and accessories from local shops in Bangalore. So let us reframe the question: how does a startup start?

The exciting world of entrepreneurship opens the door to such startup stories, journeys, pivots, business models and much more. Entrepreneurs are not limited to start-ups; they are essential in corporations, governments, NGOs and also in academia. Besides their skills and knowledge, all successful entrepreneurs have one thing in common – an entrepreneurial mindset. It’s not only the most important ingredient for running successful ventures but is also an important skill to navigate our ambiguous world and master one’s own professional journey.

Startup to the End Game is a live experiential course that explores real-world case studies of startup ideas and journeys, makes a deep dive into India’s buzzing entrepreneurship ecosystem, and unlocks the power of tech in building ventures. The course enables you to seek answers to some key entrepreneurial questions – How to solve a problem around you? How to come up with ideas? How to test the viability of the idea? How to find a product-market fit? How does the funding game work? How to launch a venture from scratch?

The course will imbibe the critical skills of entrepreneurship in you, which transcend companies, industries, global locations etc.You will participate in hands-on experiences for solving real-world problems, validating ideas, and developing products or services that could shape the future. As a capstone project, you will get to work on your business idea and take it to the launch stage of a startup. The capstone project will culminate into a mock investor pitch, where you will present your startup idea to a panel. This project will synthesize all the course concepts, from ideation to building customer personas to prototyping and help you find the product market fit for your own business idea, with the goal of creating a startup that can be taken to market.

What’s more? You will get an opportunity to win exciting rewards and a chance for mentorship with angel investors.

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Eligibility

• High school students from India and across the world are eligible to apply.
• Students should be entering or in grades 9-12 as in summer 2025.
• Students should be comfortable with written & spoken English, which will be the medium of instruction for the courses.
• Students should have consistent access to the Internet and a computer that aligns with the recommended minimum specifications.
• Students should have a good and consistent academic record.

Who is this course for?

This course is for high schoolers who aspire to thrive as entrepreneurs, equipped with the knowledge and skills to build successful ventures in diverse career paths. This course is designed for high school students and aims to spark an early interest in entrepreneurship and in developing an entrepreneurial mindset, across any future stream or career choice.

Prerequisite: High proficiency in written & spoken English.

What do I take away?

By the end of the programme, you will:

1. Grasp the ABCs of entrepreneurship principles, from industry jargons to business model tools.
2. Learn about the steps to follow at any point when building an entrepreneurial venture.
3. Develop an entrepreneurial mindset to deal with complex and ambiguous situations.
4. Practice entrepreneurial action with projects for finding product-market fit, crafting value propositions and mapping ‘user journeys’.
5. Hone your practical problem-solving superpowers, tackling real-world customer needs, challenges and wants.
6. Pitch your venture idea, storytelling the journey and injecting the ‘X-Factors
7. Equip yourself with skills adaptable to diverse career paths, gearing up for the dynamic demands of the professional world.

Programme Details

Week	Lecture Module	Project Module
Week 1	Entrepreneurial Mindset: The “why” Know why entrepreneurs do what they do and how it connects back to their passions and their mindset. Making of an entrepreneur Embracing ambiguity & making pivots Seeking feedback Where do ideas come from?	Entrepreneurial Action: Problem Definition & Ideation Find a problem that you want to solve, and brainstorm potential business ideas to solve it. Ideation techniques Group discussion How might we.. statements
Week 2	Product-Market Fit: The “who” Know what to say when investors ask “Who will buy this?”, by identifying customer needs and wants and the gap that needs to be filled. Customer/User Journey Maps & Personas Value Proposition Product-market fit How to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?	Entrepreneurial Action: Customer Voices & Insights Build customer personas, practice feature mapping and create value propositions for your business idea. Customer pain points Value proposition canvas Prototyping products/services
Week 3	Metrics & Feasibility: The “how” Know what to say when investors ask “How will this make money?”, by testing the feasibility & viability of the product/service. Total addressable market Costs, revenue, profits Valuations & funding What is the break-even & growth projection?	Entrepreneurial Action: Pro-forma financials Research on costs and make projections about potential revenue for your business idea. Costing & pricing Pro-forma Income Statement Funding plan
Week 4	Pitch & “X” factor: The “what” Know what to say when investors ask “What is this product/service about?”, by storytelling the impact of the product/service. Entrepreneurial insights Blueprint for product/service excellence Storytelling & attention hooks What makes a good pitch?	Entrepreneurial Action: Your Startup Story Pitch your idea to a mock investor panel in a set format and storytell to persuade. The problem & the idea The market & the proof of concept The numbers & the ask
Week 5	Counselling:  Get a chance to ask questions to the faculty and the mentor and get their answers and perspective.  You are encouraged to ask questions to the faculty around the following aspects: What are some related fields that can be explored based on this course topic? What are the future trends in the related fields? How can the course learning help the student enhance their college applications?	Mentoring: You are encouraged to ask questions to the mentor around the following aspects: What are some sub-topics to learn/practice beyond the course? What is the scope of the course topic if the student wants to pursue/study it further? What are some personal projects that can be taken up outside of the course based on the knowledge gained in the course?

Capstone Project

As a capstone project, you will get to work on your business idea and take it to the launch stage of a startup. This project will synthesize all the course concepts for your own business idea – ideation, building customer personas, mapping user journeys, prototyping, finding product market fit, making financial projections and pitching, with the goal of creating a startup that can be taken to market. The capstone project will culminate into a mock investor pitch, where you will present your startup idea to a panel. 

Case Studies

• Case Study 1: Entrepreneurial Mindset: Kaivalya Vohra and Aadit Palicha (Zepto)
• Case Study 2: Product Market Fit: Netflix
• Case Study 3: Metrics & Feasibility: Airbnb
• Case Study 4: Pitch & X-Factor: Paper Boat & Yoga Bar

Faculty

Nikhil Sud is a technology professional with 10 years of work experience at diverse firms, from startups to multinationals, across sectors and geographies. He holds a BS in Management (with IT) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MS in Computational Science & Engineering from Harvard University. While at MIT he was able to teach in schools in Italy, China and Israel, spent a semester studying abroad in Paris, and was involved with a biotech startup in Germany. He began his career in the US with GE’s Information Technology Leadership Program (ITLP), and later moved to the Bay Area as an early member of the product team at ad-tech startup LiveRamp, which was acquired during his tenure. Following this, he was a founding team member at Bangalore-based CoWrks, where he set up and led technology product development and IT services teams, and scaled them to support 25 coworking centres pan-India. CoWrks was acquired by Brookfield. During the pandemic he joined ThoughtWorks in Singapore as a consultant to the Singapore Government on a healthcare mobile app with 2.5 million users. Most recently he was a Vice President at Goldman Sachs in Bangalore, where he was the product leader for a proprietary internal platform that was selected as a flagship project of the firmwide Digital Strategy Office.

Grading, assessments, certification and much more

Grading, Assessments, Certification and much more

All Ashoka Horizons courses offer a certificate on satisfactory completion of the programme. 

• In-class case study discussions – 20%
• Weekly project progress – 20%
• Final project & pitch – 50%
• In-class participation and attendance – 10%

Class participation will be assessed based on your active engagement in live sessions, contributions to discussion forums, and involvement in Teaching Fellow-led activities. 

Achieve More…with Horizons

• Successful Course Completion Certificate
• Letters of Academic Achievement to top 3 students based on exceptional performance 
• Potential opportunity to rewards and mentorship with investor/s*

*For select students, subject to discretion of the faculty

IT Requirements

This programme  is administered through an online platform. Students are expected to have a foundational understanding of computer usage, including but not limited to sending emails and conducting Internet searches. Consistent access to the Internet and a computer that aligns with the recommended minimum specifications are also requisite for participation in the programme.

Have a question about Ashoka Horizons Achievers Programme? Write to us on horizons@ashoka.edu.in