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well-rounded package within the next couple of months or years, based on your aspiration and current standing,” Narang adds.

A big part of leveraging a startup’s growth is to look for means to attract more funds and get investors interested in the company. Thus, most start-ups typically look up to mentors who can help them target important investors and other means to scale up their business. Those are, what Narang calls, ‘strategic mentors’ who help you effectively strategise your company’s growth. They act more like a consultant to your start-up to help you identify the correct growth opportunities.

Of course, their need can’t be unacknowledged, after all, helping individuals form strategies that work for their firm is a subset of the knowledge that a mentor imparts. However, a mentor’s role is much greater than that. For electronics start-ups, it is first important to gain the insights of a technology mentor, who can guide you through the technical aspects of setting up an electronics start-up.

Narang explains, “You need a technology mentor who can help you recognise the technologies available to you. He can make your product and service totally technologically rugged and reliable, world-class.”

But, as mentioned before, a mentor’s job is not to get things done for you. It is to help you build the ability to do those things yourself.

Shortcomings

An electronic product’s essence lies in its design. The software and hardware of a product have a humongous effect on its usability and popularity among the end consumers. For an aspect that plays such a major role, you would think it is important enough to be included in the academic curriculum of engineering colleges. Unfortunately, that is not the case.

“Today we are missing the design competence in our engineers because it is not taught,” notes Narang. “I do not blame the young people because our education system does not have any subject that teaches you the design aspect of any electronic product, system, or solution as a subject.”

As such, youngsters just out of engineering colleges lack the essential skills to design electronic products or, for that matter, develop design solutions for other start-ups. The best way, in this scenario, is to acquire these skills in the field. But on-field experience comes with its own terrors. There are numerous hits-and-trials before one can figure out what works the best for their product and also adds value to their business.

Even if you plan to get some work experience in another organisation, chances are that you will be trained in only one particular domain under which your job role functions. The intricate nuances of designing a complete product, whether hardware or software, and explaining the entire architectural process of creating a design solution is hardly ever imparted to individuals. The guidance of an experienced mentor who has been there, and done that, can work magic in this case.

“You need to look out for people and reach out to those who can help you, but not spoon-feed you, to broaden your own understanding of what you need to do today, and in the future, to establish your start-up and to make it grow to a level of global acclaim,” says Narang.

On this note, it is also important to highlight the need for experience in the electronics field. The first wave of start-ups came three decades ago in Silicon Valley. If you look at the founders of those few successful start-ups, you will see that none of them was less than 35 or 40 years of age at that time, and none was beyond 55 or 60 years.

The crux of how these companies gained global success lies in the fact that their founders toiled for years in their particular domains before they sought out to create a venture of their own. They gained thorough knowledge of the industry they worked in, understood all the technical aspects of it, took part in developing and creating products for the organisations they worked for, without the fear of failure looming over them. They spent years in the trenches of their domain and eventually gained the knowledge to innovate a product or solution that they could monetise through their own company.

Many college students today aspire to become entrepreneurs right after they graduate. This mindset to work hard from an early age is, no doubt, a terrific trait, but this also sets you up to commit mistakes that you could have easily avoided had you gained some experience. Instead of chasing investors for your yet-to-be-established start-up, you should reach out to mentors who can help build the technical capabilities in you.

According to Narang, “Mentors will ensure that whatever product you release, does not lose its luster after six months or two years, but instead becomes unbeatable in their level of reliance and performance. If you want products like Apple’s or Samsung’s, you need people who have been in that field before you. How can you expect yourself or some young team of yours, which simply pick up some reference design from a silicon company and download some untested source codes from GitHub, to give you a reliable, global-scale product?”

The mentorship of an experienced professional should be especially sought during the initial years of founding a start-up. It is important to let a mentor identify and fill the gap in your skillset. Even their criticism comes with the desire to help you improve yourself and your product, and so should be taken in good stride.

Once you have learned everything that you needed to from your mentor, you will be ready to fly on your own like a young bird leaving the nest. You can definitely seek the advice of your mentor later on in your journey, if the need for help in strategising and understanding technical features arises.

“As the saying goes: The deeper the foundation, the higher the skyscraper goes. You need a mentor to set that foundation,” Narang adds.

Finally, it is especially important for budding entrepreneurs in the electronics industry to realise that the perfect use of technology is not to help you become a billionaire by the time you are a certain age. The best way start-ups can use technology is by creating a better future for themselves, for the others, and for the coming generations.

Technology should not drive your narrative but, instead, enable a better world. And that is exactly what a good mentor would help you achieve.