Socium

This study investigates the entrepreneurial mindset of young postgraduate students in India, focusing on MBA learners aged 20-28 years and examining why strong entrepreneurial aspirations often fail to translate into action. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, the research combines a structured survey of 120 MBA students with 30 in-depth qualitative interviews to test five hypotheses grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior and entrepreneurial event models. Quantitative findings reveal that 90.8% of respondents express immediate interest in entrepreneurship and 75.8% prefer startups over corporate jobs at graduation, decisively exceeding widely cited benchmarks of 40-50% interest and minority preference for entrepreneurship. Despite this, financial constraints (41.7%) emerge as the strongest deterrent, followed by lack of experience (24.2%) and fear of failure, while logistic regression demonstrates that desire for autonomy is a highly significant predictor of entrepreneurial aspiration (χ²=10.224, p=0.001; OR≈1.09×10¹²). Qualitative insights corroborate these patterns, highlighting an aspiration–barrier disconnect shaped by family expectations, risk perceptions and ecosystem limitations. The study contributes theoretically by refining TPB constructs for an emerging-market MBA context and empirically by underscoring the need for targeted financial instruments, experiential learning (startup residencies, incubators) and autonomy-focused career guidance to convert entrepreneurial intention into sustainable venture creation among Indian postgraduates.​