13 Reasons Why Engineers Become Successful Entrepreneurs! Discover Knowledge Wisely to Learn Today, Lead Tomorrow!



Abstract:

Engineering graduates are at an advantage when it comes to entrepreneurship. Wondering about the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs? We will discuss exactly about "why and how engineers turning as a successful entrepreneurs" this in this article! To examine let’s put our insights!

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Life as an entrepreneur can be always challenging! Everything from making money to hiring other people is entirely on the entrepreneur. But, it can also be amazing! India is a developing country and its development is truly the hard work of its people. India has produced many great scholars, scientists, intellectuals and even entrepreneurs. The sense of achieving is deep rooted in Indians and that’s the reason Indians are doing great works in almost all countries. Of all the success stories you have heard of, probably the most enthralling ones are those where young adults and teenagers put their mark on this world.

An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The process of setting up a business is known as entrepreneurship. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business/or procedures.

As we know today, the start-up culture is running wild in the field of entrepreneurship, and engineering graduates with competitive ideas are looking to launch and run their own companies. Most of the popular start-ups that have become established names are a result of the mind work of engineering students and graduates. A few examples include Ola, Flipkart, Zomato, Housing.com, Quikr, Snapdeal, and more!

Engineering and entrepreneurship at first seems like very different paths without natural crossovers, but looking closely, you find that engineering and entrepreneurship share many of the same skills. In fact, many great entrepreneurs and business leaders do in fact have education and training in engineering. Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Carlos Slim are just a few of the famous entrepreneurs who all started their careers in Engineering.
Are you wondering about the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs? There are more than just a few reasons for this, which we will discuss later in the article. 



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It is for sure that an engineering degree offer a plethora of job opportunities, but a few characteristics that engineers develop during their 4-year course give them an upper hand in becoming successful entrepreneurs. It is safe to say that engineering courses and colleges have been moulding their students to become successful entrepreneurs!

 
As established in the previous sections, some of the best start-ups have sprung from the minds of engineers. As we discuss the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs, let us also see a few entrepreneurs from India who are from the field of engineering.

1. NR Narayan Murthy 



One of the brilliant minds behind the founding of the Indian multinational corporation Infosys Ltd., N. R. Narayana Murthy, is an industrialist counted amongst the greatest Indian industrialists of contemporary time. Infosys is a major IT company which provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. Murthy has played a significant role in its success.

Murthy was born on 20 August 1946 in Sidlaghatta. Following his secondary education, he attended the National Institute of Engineering, from where he graduated in 1967 with a degree in Electrical Engineering. In 1969, he earned a master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur.

2. Azim Premji



At the age of 21, Azim Premji, a 1966 Stanford University BSC graduate, took over the family business, Western Indian Vegetable Products Ltd. The company used to produce mineral oils, soaps, and other products for daily use. Later, he extended the company’s product portfolio to include lighting products, hydraulic cylinders, hair care soaps, infant toiletries, ethnic ingredient-based toiletries, and baking fats. The young businessman understood the significance of the developing IT industry. Taking advantage of the void left by IBM’s expulsion from India in the 1980s, they changed the company’s name to Wipro and entered the high-technology industry. Wipro started producing minicomputers in technical cooperation with an American company, Sentinel Computer Corporation. Premji’s decisions and leadership put India on the map of IT companies and the sector as a whole. In 2005, the Government of India honoured him with the title of Padma Bhushan for his outstanding work in trade and commerce.

3. Sabeer Bhatia



After beginning his undergraduate education at BITS Pilani in 1986, Sabeer Bhatia moved to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) after two years. He received a Master of Science degree from Stanford University and briefly worked for Apple Computer as a hardware engineer. Bhatia’s visionary contribution to the Internet revolution earned him widespread acclaim as a pioneer in the field of web-based e-mail when he co-founded Hotmail Corporation in 1996. As President and CEO, he guided Hotmail’s rapid rise to industry leadership and its eventual acquisition by Microsoft in 1998 for 400 million dollars, an amount which was unheard of at that time. Hotmail has now transitioned to Outlook – which remains one of the largest email providers in the world.

Sabeer Bhatia is now moving ahead as the Co-Founder and CEO of ShowReel, a Video Conversation and Analytics company that aims to revolutionize entrepreneurship and innovation through the use of short-form video content.

4. Vijay Shekhar Sharma



Vijay is an alumnus of the Delhi College of Engineering. He comes from a modest background and faced a lot of difficulties during his early years. His resilience and tenacity made him start One97, the company behind the brand Paytm. Vijay’s hard work and his efforts behind building India’s biggest fintech company finally paid off. Today, Paytm has become so well-known that even Warren Buffet has invested in the company. Paytm’s ₹18,300 crores initial public offering (IPO) was oversubscribed 1.89 times in what was said to be India’s biggest share sale.

5. Sachin Bansal



Sachin Bansal became the poster boy who transformed the e-commerce landscape of India. Sachin met Binny Bansal at IIT Delhi when they were students, and they later worked at Amazon together. E-commerce in India was in its infancy when Sachin and Binny quit Amazon to start Flipkart. Indians were not comfortable with the concept of online shopping, so this venture was a huge risk. But they believed in their dream and worked hard to achieve their goals. Flipkart has now been acquired by Walmart for a whopping $16 billion, and Sachin is known as the pioneer of the eCommerce industry in India.

6. Bhavish Aggarwal



Bhavish is a graduate of IIT Bombay. An entrepreneur at heart, he initially worked with Microsoft but quit after two years to start his own travel and tourism business. A bad experience one day while renting a cab made him see the opportunity in starting a cab rental company for people facing similar issues. That’s how he started Ola Cabs – to simply solve a consumer problem – and over time he’s taken the company to even greater heights. Ola has now entered the EV vehicle space as well and is valued at around $5 billion. 


7. Deepinder Goyal & Pankaj Chaddah | Co-Founders, Zomato


Zomato was initially founded to provide end-to-end information about restaurants, both small and large, including their cuisine, menu, maps, branches, reviews, the approximate cost for two people, and more. The co-founders Deepinder and Pankaj later added delivery to their services. Deepinder holds an Integrated Masters in Mathematics and Computing from IIT Delhi, and Pankaj studied engineering at IIT Delhi.

These are a few famous engineers in India who have made it big as entrepreneurs in recent times. 

Famous engineer-turned-entrepreneurs internationally!

In reality, many successful entrepreneurs and business personalities are qualified with education and training background in Engineering. Michael Bloomberg, Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Carlos Slim are just some of the famous entrepreneurs who all began their careers in Engineering.

1. Michael Bloomberg




Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American businessman, politician, philanthropist, and author. He went on to attend Johns Hopkins University, where he joined the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. While there, he constructed the blue jay costume for the university's mascot He graduated in 1964 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. In 1966, he graduated from Harvard Business School with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree.

2. Bill Gates



Bill Gates, in full William Henry Gates III, (born October 28, 1955, Seattle, Washington, U.S.), American computer programmer and entrepreneur who cofounded Microsoft Corporation, the world’s largest personal-computer software company.

3. Elon Reeve Musk



Elon Reeve Musk FRS is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter; founder of the Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI; and president of the philanthropic Musk Foundation.

4. Alexander Naydenov



Alexander Naydenov is a Bulgarian entrepreneur who now calls Germany his home. He is co-founder of PaperHive, an online co-working hub that is a resource for scholars. This resource is a place to collaborate, share, and annotate online texts.

Naydenov is also co-founder and chairman of Where Ideas Find Their Home, a social entrepreneurship incubator. His business has helped numerous non-profits and furthered many social initiatives. Naydenov has a bachelor's degree in economics and master's degree in business and computer science. Alexander also started IdeaHub, a German startup weekend series.

5. Carlos Slim


Carlos Slim ; born 28 January 1940, is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He went on to study civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he also concurrently taught algebra and linear programming.

Apart from the ability to bounce ideas off the top of their heads, there are more reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs. 

Let us explore the same in the next section!

13 Reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs
When we see that a lot of entrepreneurs are either engineering drop-outs (yes, you read that right!) or graduates, it makes us think about reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs, right?

Starting a business is no mean task, but engineers possess a certain skill set that helps them become the best entrepreneurs out there. A study, carried out as early as 2012 by ‘Identified’, showed that there were 3 times the CEOs with degrees in advanced engineering than CEOs with an MBA degree. This was back in 2012! Today, in 2023, the start-up revolution is smarter, with many more engineering minds put into the field.



So, what is it that engineers have that makes them stand out as entrepreneurs? Let us look at the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs! 

That's because all businesses need to keep up with modern technology to thrive. Engineers also need their fingers on the pulse; many have a working knowledge of programming, as well as an understanding of the uses and limitations of the technology of the day. 

1. Engineers develop inventive mindset from the core of the heart. 

Innovation is one of the key skills that drive any business. Engineers possess the ability to create and hence, have killer ideas that would work out logically too! Innovation is one of the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs.



2. Engineers have capabilities to identify opportunities. 

Engineers have the eye for opportunities and the ability to tap into them in the most effective way possible! They study in an extremely competitive environment which enables them to spot opportunities and tap into them, making full use of the said opportunity to succeed. This is one of the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs!

3. Engineers have positive attitude resilient- the willingness to win 

Engineers also have the ‘never give up easily’ mindset, which gives them the power to endure hardships on the way! They are more resilient to failure than one can imagine and have the strength to bounce back in no time! Emotional strength is one of the main reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs. 

4. Engineers are excellent planners.

With solid experience in working on projects, engineers are aware that planning is one of the most crucial elements that factor in the success of a project. Having worked on several projects at the college level and more, they are able planners with the ability to stick to a plan while also being ready with plans B and C, in case plan A does not work!

This ability to plan effectively and readiness with alternate plans are reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs.



5. Engineers are great team makers and executors in line of set goals

Engineers spend most of their student life working on projects as a group. This moulds them to be team players. They thus, understand the essence of a team and the fact that a project requires diverse inputs that can be crucial to its success.

Engineers can easily mingle in a team and make sure that the project goes on smoothly. This is one of the main reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs.

6. Engineers are always trustworthy





Engineers have experience working with other teams and team members. They understand how trust is an integral part of any team. Thus, they are sensitive towards the emotions of their team members, which is also why they are such good team players.

Apart from this, they are truthful, often straightforward too, which helps them develop a good relationship with their customers and clients. This is one of the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs.

7. Engineers are rational in approach

The ability to look at things from a practical perspective is extremely crucial for even a business idea to successfully see the light of day. They know to evaluate the scope of an idea and approach everything that pertains to it rationally. They can calculate the feasibility of every step in setting up a business and get things right from logistics to the setup right!

This is exactly what a business needs – a rational approach rather than an emotional one. And engineers are more rationally attached to their business than they are emotionally. This is another reason why engineers make great entrepreneurs.

8. Engineers are eager to learn new knowledge

An unending thirst for knowledge keeps pushing you to greater heights in life. This is one of the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs – they yearn for more knowledge and are always open to learning new things. This quest for deeper knowledge is what makes them the best at what they do!

9. Engineers are great problem solvers

Their technical background and exposure to several tech projects make engineers some of the greatest problem solvers. They can rectify problems easily by approaching them with logic. This is a crucial skill when it comes to starting and running a business effectively. This is a reason why engineers make great entrepreneurs. 

10. Engineers understand technologies best

Technology is an engineer’s strong suit! As the world charges towards a more tech-savvy (present and) future, technical knowledge is becoming a prerequisite in most fields. Businesses have also become technologically advanced, and engineers have the upper hand at being better entrepreneurs with the technical skills they possess! This is one of the reasons why engineers make great entrepreneurs. 

Engineering is a field that provides students with more skills than they require for just engineering jobs. Engineering courses equip them with all the skills needed to be successful entrepreneurs. College life is holistic, and the exposure they are provided with helps them readily take on entrepreneurship with confidence. 

11. Engineers are capable of solving problems 

The engineering field is replete with people who are well-trained to solve a myriad of problems. Engineers are given training to think logically and to pursue a methodology to find useful solutions. This is how the engineering industry brings value to consumers. It forms the basis of a flourishing business.


12. Engineers are optimistic 

Engineering courses educate students to persist with even in an adverse situation. An engineer always comes up with a positive frame of mind and will not give up until a solution is found. An entrepreneur should persevere and should continue to move ahead in the face of tough situation. An individual’s attitude and approach spell out the difference between success and failure. 

At times, a business head may fluff the public to ensure the reputation of his firm’s reputation and values remain intact. Instead of believing in the concept of mistruths, an engineer will not mince any words in telling the truth. This attitude creates confidence with consumers. This way, people with an engineering background will have a positive impact on the business environment.


13. Engineers have modesty and a longing for knowledge 
An engineer is not scared to learn new things and gain more knowledge. This attitude results in the growth of individual as well as that of a company’s. Once a new product or service is launched into the market, it falls on the engineer to identify the best target market for the products.

What Next...
Are you an aspiring engineer? 
If yes then JEC is one of the top institutes in India that offers an array of courses in the field of engineering, along with excellent placement support, Value Added Internships  and Quality Teaching Learning Processes. 

To sum it up, if you are looking for a college, that allows you to broaden your horizons, enrich your learning process and personal growth in various aspects, JEC, Jaipur Engineering College, is the place for you. You will always find a great deal of social support, here as you explore your limits and finally leave the campus with a truckload of memories to cherish.

Finally, Let us know if you too want to be an engineer entrepreneurs in the comments section below!


In next article the interested viewers can read about " How can a Vice Chancellor transform a University"? 

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