Bridging Classroom and Startup: Saurav Satyal on Experiential Learning and Student Entrepreneurship in Nepal

Saurav Satyal
Academic Lead, Embark College

With nearly fifteen years of experience in higher education, Saurav Satyal, Academic Lead at Embark College, has built a career around shaping academic institutions from the ground up. His work has largely focused on foreign-affiliated colleges, particularly those linked with UK universities, while also extending to collaborations with American institutions. Across these roles, his core focus has remained consistent like strengthening academic quality, ensuring regulatory compliance and improving the overall student experience. Often involved at the foundation stage of institutions, he has played a key role in designing academic and operational structures and supporting their growth over time.

Satyal’s approach to education is deeply influenced by his own international exposure. Having spent close to six years in the United Kingdom, where he completed two Master’s degrees in Strategic Business and Leadership and in International Business, he gained firsthand insight into an education system that prioritises alignment between curriculum, student support and holistic development. What stood out to him was that education was not limited to classroom delivery but aimed at shaping individuals who are confident, adaptable and industry-ready. This experience continues to guide his academic philosophy and institutional leadership.

At present, his work places strong emphasis on experiential learning, entrepreneurship and incubation. He believes that the true value of education lies in preparing students to navigate uncertainty, take informed risks and translate ideas into real-world outcomes. Through hands-on incubation models, industry engagement and sustained mentorship, he focuses on bridging the gap between theory and practice while embedding sustainability, ethics and long-term thinking into the student journey.

In a conversation with Business 360, Satyal shares insights from his journey in higher education, his views on entrepreneurship and incubation, and how academic institutions can better prepare students for both enterprise and employability. Excerpts: 

Where do you see the biggest gap between what entrepreneurship students learn in classrooms and what startup founders actually face on the ground?

The biggest gap is action. Students often come up with excellent ideas. They prepare strong business cases, market reports and presentations. On paper, everything looks impressive. But the real test of a business only begins when you put time, money and personal risk into execution.

Many students are deeply attached to the idea itself but hesitate when it comes to committing fully to execution. Risk aversion plays a major role here. Financial constraints, family background and lack of entrepreneurial exposure at home often shape their mindset. If no one in the family has ever started a business, the emotional and practical support for taking that leap is usually limited.

At our incubation centre, which is open not only to our own students but to anyone interested in entrepreneurship, we focus heavily on hand-holding, especially in the first six months. We help with company registration, product launch, pitching, participation in competitions and even access to seed funding. We also have a dedicated incubation coach, Frederic Vassort, a Belgian entrepreneur, who mentors students closely and works on breaking mental barriers around risk and failure.

Many institutions focus on business plan competitions. How can academia move beyond this and build incubation models that truly prepare students for uncertainty, failure and iteration?

Winning a business plan competition or receiving a cash prize does not solve the real problem. You can give a student Rs 100,000, but if the mindset is not ready, the money alone achieves very little.

The real challenge is helping students build the capacity to take risks, identify opportunities and understand the ecosystem around them. They need to know what support systems exist, whether it is government grants, innovation funds, angel investors or venture capital. Many students simply do not have access to this information or the networks required to reach them.
Incubation should focus on the full journey of an idea. It starts with concept development, moves into prototyping, sampling and market testing, followed by feedback, iteration and eventually commercialisation. This process applies to both product-based and service-based businesses.

Rather than one-time competitions, we focus on gradual growth. Students receive regular mentorship, industry exposure and weekly review meetings. The emphasis is on maturing the idea, finding the right market fit and identifying the right customer segment. At this stage, money is far less important than clarity and learning.

In your view, what role should faculty play in an incubation ecosystem? Are they mentors, evaluators or something else?

Faculty play a central role but not just as evaluators. In our institution, most faculty members are practitioners rather than purely academic professionals. They bring real industry experience into the classroom, which helps students connect theory with reality.

Faculty can be mentors, guides and sometimes even collaborators. In fact, they can also become investors. If a group of faculty members, each with different expertise in marketing, finance or human resources, come together and invest small amounts into a student venture, it creates shared ownership.

When there is shared ownership, everyone wants the business to succeed. The guidance becomes more committed and mentorship becomes continuous rather than symbolic. This kind of ecosystem, where faculty, mentors and students work together as stakeholders, makes incubation far more meaningful.

Given Nepal’s market size and constraints, what kinds of startups do you think are most realistic for student entrepreneurs to pursue during incubation?

I do not believe that any market is truly saturated. Even in what appears to be a red ocean, there is always a blue ocean if you bring creativity and solve problems differently.

Take the example of higher education itself. There are more than 59 foreign-affiliated colleges operating in Nepal today. When our institution entered the market, we were part of that same pool. What made the difference was our value proposition and the way we approached education.

The same principle applies to startups. As long as you can offer something distinctive, whether in product, service, delivery or customer experience, there is room to grow. Some of our students focus purely on the domestic market, others work on export-oriented models and some target international markets from day one.

Several startups incubated with us have already secured business deals with established companies in Nepal. That shows that market size is not the biggest constraint. Clarity, differentiation and execution matter far more.

You place strong emphasis on experiential and industry-linked learning. How can incubation programmes ensure that industry engagement is meaningful rather than symbolic?

Industry engagement has to move beyond guest lectures and ceremonial partnerships. One practical example is a mini enterprise launchpad we recently organised at Labib Mall.

We gave students physical space in a weekend market setting. They had to create a brand, select a product, set pricing and margins, manage supply chains, prepare profit and loss statements, and handle cash flow. Most importantly, they had to stand in the market and sell. Ther interaction with customers, feedback received and sales performance became part of their final assessment. That entire day of real business activity was their exam.

This is learning by doing. Instead of teaching marketing or entrepreneurship as abstract concepts, students experience them directly. Every subject and module includes an experiential component. Some projects focus on social impact, some on services and others on profitability.

Through repeated exposure to real-world settings, students develop confidence, resilience and practical understanding. That is how incubation and industry engagement become real, relevant and transformative rather than symbolic.

Sustainability is a core part of your academic work. How can incubators encourage startups to think about sustainability and ethics early on, without making it feel like an added burden?

Sustainability and ethics should never be treated as add-ons. In reality, they are central to building any serious business. The moment an incubator starts talking about funding, investment or scaling, sustainability automatically becomes relevant.

What we often see is that new founders start their businesses without thinking about ethical practices or sustainability. Later, when they approach banks, venture capitalists or even grant agencies, they are asked very basic questions: What is your sustainability framework? What are your ethical safeguards? At that point, they have to start from zero.

Most investors expect at least two years of operations before investing and they look closely at whether a business is both sustainable and scalable. If students are trained from the beginning to embed these principles into their business models, it does not feel like an extra burden later. It becomes part of how they think about business. That is why, during incubation, we introduce sustainability and ethics early, as core business fundamentals rather than compliance requirements.

Many student founders struggle to balance academics and entrepreneurship. How should institutions structure incubation so that it supports both, instead of forcing students to choose one over the other?

I think this challenge is often misunderstood. If entrepreneurship is forced on students simply to pass a module or earn grades, it does become a burden. But entrepreneurship should never be compulsory in that sense.

If a student genuinely wants to pursue an entrepreneurial journey and chooses to walk that path alongside their studies, balancing the two is possible. Not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur and that is perfectly fine.

In fact, an academic journey has two outcomes. One is entrepreneurship and the other is employability. Even if a student does not end up running a business, the skills, discipline and exposure they gain make them far more employable. Institutions should structure incubation as a flexible support system, not an obligation. The key is choice, not pressure.

Based on your international exposure, what are one or two global incubation practices that Nepali institutions could realistically adopt?

One very effective practice is building strong industry advisory boards. At our institution, the Industry Advisory Board includes professionals with deep experience across sectors. This level of industry involvement ensures that academic learning stays aligned with real market needs.

The core idea behind establishing our college was to bridge the gap between academia and skills. Employers often say they cannot find the right talent, while graduates say they cannot find suitable jobs. We try to solve this by bringing both sides together.

For example, if a multinational company anticipates needing 20 to 50 skilled professionals in a specific sector within two or three years, we work with them to design courses aligned with those needs. Alongside academic learning, students receive parallel, skill-focused training. By the time they graduate, they are job-ready.

We have applied this approach in sectors like automotive and retail, both of which have strong growth potential in Nepal. Students can either enter the workforce with the right skills or use that exposure to start their own ventures. This model is very common globally and can be realistically adapted in Nepal.