My Tryst with Entrepreneurship at Ashoka: Building More Than a Venture

In my second year at Ashoka, my roommate, a Psychology & Philosophy major, enrolled in AIDA (Artificial Intelligence & Data Analytics). Her choice struck me, she was learning both critical thinking & cutting-edge skills. That’s when I realised what Ashoka enables us to do: pursue our interests while aligning with what the world needs.

I enrolled in Business Analysis & Strategy, one of the most rigorous courses in the Entrepreneurship department. As a designer & Psychology major, I was warned it might be overwhelming. It was. I had to learn accounting in the first week and adapt quickly in a class of economics & finance students. But it became one of my most rewarding experiences. Our team won Best Presentation, & more importantly, I discovered a new way to connect design, business, and human behaviour. This course didn’t just introduce entrepreneurship, it reshaped how I approached problems.

Over the next two years, the Centre for Entrepreneurship helped me strengthen three key capacities: pattern recognition, context switching, & empathy, each shaping how I think & build.

Pattern recognition helped me spot behaviours that needed changing. While leading marketing at the Entrepreneurship Club, I noticed our brainstorming relied on groupthink. We rarely moved beyond four or five ideas. I introduced brain-writing, a design-thinking exercise, & we generated over 100 ideas in 30 minutes. It showed me how process changes can unlock real creativity.

Context switching helped me connect seemingly unrelated domains. I took courses across FMCG, Branding, & Product Management to mirror how learning works in the real world. From studying how kirana stores manage supply chains to prototyping features as a product manager, I learned to ground business decisions in real user behaviour. My work as a founding designer at startups across no-code, ed-tech, & sustainability was shaped by this learning curve. In my final semester, I combined psychology, UX, & business strategy to build an emotional-wellness platform for GenZ in Venture Design Lab.

This ability to switch roles deepened during my semester abroad at King’s College London doing the Business & Management course. There, I applied my Ashoka learnings in business strategy, market research, design thinking & pitched a company in 10 days. I led the ideation as a designer, then switched to a strategist’s mindset to build financials & marketing all while working in an international team. We ended up delivering the panel’s top pitch. That experience showed me how globally relevant the skills from the Centre truly are.

Finally, empathy has always guided my work as a UX designer. Ashoka helped me apply it to problems close to home. My grandfather struggled with his smartphone, so I turned that into a project in my social entrepreneurship course. In a team of eight, we interviewed older adults & developed a printed digital literacy toolkit through three phases of iteration. Entrepreneurship became very real—it meant helping someone I love live more independently.

These experiences shaped a mindset: my only real barrier is lack of genuine interest. Everything else is a design challenge. I owe this to our faculty Shridhar Sethuram, who saw a leader in me before I did & Navyug Mohnot’s Life Design Lab, which reframed how I see my future.

The Centre for Entrepreneurship also became a space to build community. I started in the E-Club as a design member & became Director of Marketing & Communications. I then co-founded Scenes, a creative lab for students to explore their passions- content, startups, writing, music, poetry, & more.

In the end, every course, club, & conversation at the Centre helped me design not just ideas, but a mindset, a way of seeing the world. At Ashoka, entrepreneurship became more than a discipline. It became a mirror, a compass, & a personal journey. I came here to build something meaningful. I leave having built someone, me.

Written by Tanisha Raghav (ASP’25)