Students’ Entrepreneurial Intention in the Most Literate State of India: A Perspective on Emerging Environmental Valuations

Abstract

The transformative powers of the contextual environment on the entrepreneurial pursuits of nations had always been awe inspiring for India. With an unprecedented upsurge in startup initiatives in the country, India has also slowly starting pitching itself into the entrepreneurial foray resting its ambition on youth. Realizing the up springing of entrepreneurial intentions among the young in the country, policymakers in Centre as well as States are competing to amass all support elements in the operative environment of students who aspire to be selfemployed and create employment for others. The undulations of this paradigm is well experienced in the most literate state of India - Kerala which has started evaluating and favoring first generation entrepreneurs within families and societies. This paper attempts to analyze whether these evaluations by the environmental components can influence the entrepreneurial intention of students in Kerala. The data was collected from a representative sample of 474 final year students from BTech/MBA courses identified through stratified random sampling across the length and breadth of the state of Kerala. Findings proved that the entrepreneurial intention of students of Kerala is subject to valuations by elements of the closer environment as well as general environment which can have significant effects on policy imperatives in this regard