Harsh Bhargava (MBA 1977), president of the Washington, DC–based consulting company Bankworld, built I Create, a nonprofit organization focused on combating India’s unemployment crisis through entrepreneurship, in 1999. Since that time, 67,000 Indians have completed one of the organization’s two programs at 12 centers across the country, creating more than 3,000 entrepreneurs and 12,000 jobs.

“Our goal has been to leverage the program through government organizations, given their vast resources and existing infrastructure to support our program,” says Bhargava.

Though implementation has been slow, I Create recently set up a business incubation center in partnership with a division of the Federal Ministry of Entrepreneurship.

Meanwhile, the jobs situation in India remains dire, with 17.8 million of the nation’s 1.34 billion people unemployed, according to the United Nations International Labor Organization.

“Much work needs to be done,” says Bhargava, “otherwise tens of millions of young Indians who have a dream for the new and emerging India will be disappointed and disheartened, and India would have lost a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to engage such a large young potential workforce.”

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