One of Professor Nishith Prakash’s interventions that was implemented in Andhra Pradesh, India on teaching kids to have entrepreneur mindset received two awards by The Money Awareness and Inclusion Awards in the following two categories:
- Best Entrepreneurship Education: https://www.maiawards.org/winners-2024/
- Best Project in a Developing Economy: https://www.maiawards.org/winners-2024/
The Entrepreneurial Mindset Development Program (EMDP) was implemented in Andhra Pradesh to equip grade 9 students with essential entrepreneurial skills and mindsets. The program, developed in collaboration with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), included weekly instructional classes totaling 50 hours and project-based learning, where students completed small and large projects to address community challenges. Using a cascade training model, master trainers trained teachers for effective curriculum delivery. The intervention aimed to foster skills such as curiosity, resilience, risk assessment, and collaboration, helping students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. The study, conducted through a randomized controlled trial (RCT), involved 75 treated sub-districts and 50 control sub-districts, analyzing key behavioral and academic outcomes using administrative records and an Intent-to-Treat (ITT) approach.
The results demonstrated increased agency over education, career, and personal aspirations, especially among female students, who also showed improvements in financial literacy and English and Math scores. An incentivized business pitch task, modeled after “Shark Tank,” objectively measured entrepreneurial skills, revealing that girls performed better in pitching and secured higher investment levels. Additionally, labor market heterogeneity influenced students’ aspirations—those in manufacturing-dense areas leaned towards business, whereas others favored government jobs. The findings underscore EMDP’s effectiveness in enhancing entrepreneurial skills, particularly for female students, and its potential scalability as a cost-effective intervention to bridge gender gaps in entrepreneurship and labor market participation.
