Education · School students · Careers
Entrepreneurship awareness that begins with a problem worth solving, not a business plan.
Students spend the session finding a real difficulty somebody near them has, working out who it affects and why it persists, then sketching and testing one responsible answer to it. Whether any of them ever starts a company is beside the point.
In short
Entrepreneurship Awareness is a group programme GullyFuture runs inside schools for Classes 5 to 12. Students practise noticing problems, understanding the people affected, shaping a responsible solution, thinking about cost and feasibility, and presenting for feedback. It is not a startup course, no money is involved, and the institution provides the group and supervision.
Why this matters
Most of it is noticing, and almost none of it is launching
The word arrives at school already attached to funding announcements and founders on screens. The everyday version is quieter, more useful, and available to a thirteen-year-old this week.
The skill is finding the problem, not having the idea
Ideas are easy to produce and easy to abandon. The harder and more teachable habit is looking at something inconvenient that everyone has stopped seeing, and asking who it affects and how often.
Value gets created inside ordinary jobs too
An employee who notices a process that wastes an hour a day and fixes it is doing the same thinking. Framing this as preparation for founding a company would exclude most of the room for no reason.
Assumptions collapse faster when somebody is asked
Students routinely design for a user they imagined. Five minutes of asking an actual classmate, teacher or parent about the problem changes the idea more than another hour of discussion would.
Feedback is easier to take when the stakes are small
A three-minute presentation to classmates, with comments directed at the idea, gives students practice at hearing what is wrong with their work without it becoming a verdict on them.
Responsibility is part of the idea, not a later stage
An idea can be clever and still take advantage of somebody, waste something, or exclude the people who most need it. Students are asked who could be harmed while the idea is still on paper.
What we cover
From an observation to something that can be shown
The session moves in order. Each step is short, and each one produces something written down that the next step uses.
Observing problems that are already there
Looking at the school, the route home and the neighbourhood for things that take too long, cost too much, get lost or exclude somebody. Students collect several before choosing one.
Understanding who actually has the problem
Naming a specific group rather than everybody, and finding out what those people currently do instead. This is the step most ideas skip.
Generating more than one solution
Producing several options before judging any of them, including at least one that uses nothing but rearranging what already exists.
Value and feasibility
Would anyone bother to use this, and could a school student plausibly make a rough version? Two questions that remove most ideas quickly and honestly.
Teamwork and roles
Agreeing who does what, what happens when a member does not deliver, and how a group decides between two ideas without the loudest voice settling it.
Simple costs and where money would come from
Plain arithmetic on paper: what it would cost to make ten of something, what someone might pay, and why that gap matters. No financial products, projections or valuations.
Ethics and responsibility
Who could be harmed, what data an idea would collect, what it would waste, and who it quietly leaves out. Asked before the presentation, not after.
Presenting and taking feedback
Three minutes, a stated problem, a stated user and one thing the group is unsure about — then structured comments aimed at the idea.
In the session
The small idea challenge
Groups work on one problem for the length of the session and present at the end. Nothing continues after the session unless the school chooses to run it as a series.
- A problem hunt: each student lists five annoyances from the past week before any solutions are allowed.
- A quick interview round inside the school — a classmate, a teacher or a staff member is asked what they currently do about the chosen problem.
- A one-page idea sheet: problem, who has it, proposed answer, and what the group is assuming.
- A costing sheet done in plain arithmetic, with every number the group had to guess marked as a guess.
- A 'what would make this fail' round, where each group deliberately argues against its own idea.
- A responsibility check listing anyone the idea could disadvantage, and what the group would change.
- Three-minute presentations, followed by structured feedback on the idea from the rest of the class.
By age
The same sequence, scaled to what the group can hold
Classes 5 to 7
Problems drawn from the classroom, the bus and the playground. More making than discussing, drawings instead of written plans, no costing, and the presentation is one minute per group.
Classes 8 to 10
The full sequence with real interviews inside the school, a written assumption list and simple arithmetic on cost. Groups are pushed to narrow a vague problem into a specific one.
Classes 11 to 12
Feasibility, trade-offs and ethics take more of the session, and students are asked how the same thinking applies inside an existing organisation as well as outside one.
What students leave with
Modest, and all of it observable
We do not promise marks, confidence or outcomes. These are the things a session can actually produce, and a teacher in the room can see whether they happened.
- Each student names one problem they observed themselves and the specific group of people it affects.
- Each group produces a one-page idea sheet listing its assumptions, including the ones it could not check.
- Students practise asking a real person about a problem instead of designing for an imagined user.
- Students give and receive feedback directed at an idea rather than at the person presenting it.
- Students can describe at least one way their idea could disadvantage somebody, and one change that would reduce it.
- The school receives attendance, the topics covered, and the idea sheets where students agree to leave them.
Formats
Ways this can run at your institution
Pick what fits the group, the hall and the time you can give it. Most schools start with one session and decide afterwards.
Awareness session
A concise introduction for a larger group — an assembly or a year group — closing with moderated questions.
Interactive workshop
Classroom-sized. Scenarios, discussion, reflection, and an action worksheet the student keeps.
Expert conversation
A supervised conversation with a professional or practitioner, built around the questions students prepared.
Panel discussion
Several perspectives on one theme, with prepared questions and questions submitted by students.
Short programme series
Two or more connected sessions, with something to practise in between and a closing reflection.
What the school provides
This session needs more room and more noise than most. It also needs a few adults willing to be interviewed for five minutes by a group of twelve-year-olds.
Start a conversation- A class group, and a room where five or six groups can work without hearing each other.
- Ninety minutes at minimum for the full sequence; a two-session series suits it better.
- A staff coordinator, and teacher supervision throughout.
- Two or three staff members available briefly for the interview round, if students are to stay within the school building.
- Paper, markers and a flat surface per group; no devices are required.
- Agreement on whether groups may talk to staff outside the classroom, and which areas are out of bounds.
- A note on any existing school enterprise club or competition, so that the session supports it rather than duplicating it.
Safeguarding
How sessions with students are kept safe
An entrepreneurship session can drift towards money, promotion and competition. Each of those is bounded before the session begins.
- Programmes are arranged through the institution and run in approved group settings, supervised throughout by a school-designated adult.
- No unsupervised one-to-one mentoring of a student, and no private messaging or personal contact between a contributor and a student.
- Contributors are screened and briefed for the role they are given, and may not use a session to sell or promote anything.
- We collect only the information a programme needs, and seek institutional and parent or guardian consent where it is required.
- A student's photograph, quote or story is used only with specific permission obtained beforehand.
- Anything touching safety, abuse, severe distress or self-harm follows the institution's own escalation and professional-referral process.
- No money is collected, raised, invested, pledged or handled. Nothing is sold, no fee is charged to students, and no crowdfunding or sponsorship is arranged through the session.
- Ideas produced in the session belong to the students who made them. We do not publish, commercialise, submit or share them without the school's agreement and the students' permission.
- Contributors who run businesses speak about the work and the decisions, not about their products, and may not recruit students for internships, competitions or paid programmes.
- Where an idea challenge is used, every group presents and feedback is given to the idea. No student is ranked as suited or unsuited to this kind of work.
- If a group wants to survey or interview anyone, it stays inside the school with the coordinator's approval, collects no personal details, and does not approach people outside the premises.
- We promise no business outcome of any kind. Nothing in the session should be read as a claim that a student's idea can or should become a business.
Privacy, consent and child-data wording on this site is being reviewed against current Indian law before any student information is collected. See our privacy notice for what we hold and why.
Questions
Questions schools ask us
Is this a startup course?
No. There is no business plan template, no pitch to investors, no incubation and no expectation that anything continues after the session. The programme builds the thinking underneath entrepreneurship — noticing a problem, understanding the people affected, testing an assumption, taking responsibility for an idea — which is equally useful to a student who will never start a company.
Do students need a business idea before they attend?
No, and arriving with one is usually a disadvantage. The session deliberately starts from observation rather than from ideas, because students who bring a favourite idea tend to defend it instead of examining whether anybody actually has the problem. Groups choose a problem together during the first part of the session.
Is any money collected, raised or invested?
None at all. No money is collected from students or the school for participation, nothing is sold in the session, and no funding, sponsorship or investment is arranged for any student idea. Costing is done as plain arithmetic on paper with imagined numbers, and no financial product, scheme or platform is named or recommended.
Can younger students take part?
Yes, in an adapted form. For Classes 5 to 7 the problems come from the classroom, the bus and the playground, groups draw their solutions rather than writing plans, costing is left out and presentations are one minute each. The observation habit is the same; the vocabulary and the paperwork are not.
Can entrepreneurs join the session as speakers?
Yes, under the same conditions as every contributor. They are screened and briefed for a student audience, a school-designated adult supervises throughout, and they speak about how the work is done rather than about what their company sells. Selling, recruiting and self-promotion are not permitted, and the school approves who comes.
Related programmes
What schools usually look at next
About GullyFuture
GullyFuture is an initiative of Gully Future Foundation, Bengaluru. We design practical, age-appropriate group programmes and bring suitable educators, professionals and mentors to institutions that invite us. The institution provides the student group, the venue, supervision and the local context; we shape the programme and find the right people to run it.
We are not a tuition centre, a counselling or therapy service, a diagnostic service, a course marketplace, or a motivational-speaking business. We provide educational guidance and programme facilitation — not tuition, therapy, diagnosis, crisis care or guaranteed career counselling.
More about Gully Future FoundationPage review
Last reviewed . Guidance pages are re-read as programmes run and as rules change.
Bring this initiative to your institution
Tell us the class group, how long you can give us, and whether the school already runs an enterprise club. We will propose a single workshop or a short series and say what each would cover.