For a 27-year-old with just one year’s experience in the family business prior to his MBA, this is quite an achievement. But he is not the only dreamer. He belongs to a new breed of MBAs choosing the entrepreneurial path right after graduating from a B-school. A one crore salary be damned, the buzz is about the guys who opted out of placement, because secretly, almost everyone craves to be in control of their own destiny — to be an entrepreneurial rock star.

But, like the proverbial struggling artist, you may need a ‘day job’ to support yourself. Anoop Radhakrishnan, Zerin Rahiman, Shivakumar R, Abhisar Gupta and Sandeep Ramesh all graduated from IIM Lucknow in 2006. They formed UniAxess Healthcare, which focused on the relatively unorganised field of medical tourism. However, in its first nine months, UniAxess had no revenues. “We decided to go a little slow and analyse the market,” says Ramesh. “No one has really cracked this business yet, and we wanted to avoid pitfalls.”

Meanwhile, the bread was buttered by taking on consulting projects through another company they had formed called IndigoEdge. “Solvency is the key to survival,” says Ramesh. “Do anything that will pay the bills (for the first year at least).” The team is quite kicked, though, about the quality of projects it has executed — from an impact study in public health in Karnataka, to a market estimation and entry project for a German manufacturer.

Things have picked up steam on the medical tourism front now. UniAxess Healthcare received $100,000 (Rs 41 lakh) from an angel investor based in Bangalore and opened up an office in Abu Dhabi. The company has handled 50 clients so far and expects to open offices in four countries by July 2008. But the bread, butter and even the jam continues to come from management consulting. “We are now in the private equity space, helping a furniture manufacturer raise Rs 100 crore for retail expansion,” he says. As PE deals work on a commission basis (4 per cent being the standard), the potential gains from such assignments are huge. The Rs 2 lakh earned as commission so far on the medical tourism side pales in comparison.