Is an undergraduate degree essential to get a programming job at a startup in India?

Simple Answer: No. Honest Answer: Stay put, complete your course and then do whatever it is that you want to do. Why? Cause you still live in India and the decisions we make, are made not just for us, but for those around us as well. Your parents will tire explaining to people why you dropped out and the father who once was so proud of you, might not have that glint in his eye anymore. If anything you learn a bit of patience - University in India, is a metric to see if you can persevere and complete something that you started, even if your fire started burning towards a different direction. Keep that fire alive, but I'd have a lot of respect for someone who can see things through, and as such completing your degree. Don't take time off - nobody who has ever gone to work in the real world, ever get backs to the books again and its an excuse if you seek it to be so. If you are intending to complete your degree, do it. Now the other side-effects that you haven't thought about: When you get your passport and have to get that stamp saying "Immigration Clearance Not required" - without which you have to go get a letter from the local police station each time clearing your name - is not given unless you have a degree. You are a higher flight risk if you apply for a visa, Loan or anything that is associated with credibility in the society. Your girlfriend will have to love you an awful lot to have to take you to her parents and explain what you do and defend your decision to drop out and not be a graduate. Careerwise, you also dont know what you might do next. You might get an ambition to go stanford, or write a paper on something you came across - except guess what, without an UG, its all an impossible dream. There is a Pro to the situation though, the fact that you don't have a safety net of a degree backing you, a few do exceedingly well as they make every attempt to stay ahead of the curve. But that does have the danger of throwing your work-life balance out of the Window. As I said, the simple answer is NO, the wise answer however is "Finish what you started" PS: I dropped out. Wiser Now.

My views are a little contradictory to what Mr. Vijay Anand says. I do agree to what he says up to a certain extent (related to all the technical aspects of visas and further education and stuff) but I strongly feel that if you wish to drop out then GO AHEAD AND DO IT.. There are thousands of excuses to not do a particular thing but even one good reason is enough to do it. I believe life is too short to waste so if you feel you are wasting time in your degree and you have confidence that you can do a lot more with your life by dropping out and saving an year then go ahead and do it. BUT you also need to be prepared mentally to handle all the peer pressure from your family and friends that will come along your way when you go ahead with your decision. You might call me a hypocrite coz personally I didn't drop out from my degree even though I knew I'll never be working in that field and here I'm passing on gyaan to others to drop out but I had my reasons and I sometimes wish i should have done it. Why I'm saying that you should go ahead and do it if you are confident enough coz I have seen only one dropout case till now and it has taught me that if you are really willing to do something you can achieve it no matter what the odds are. A very close friend of mine dropped out from IIT in his final year of engineering (you need courage to drop out in final year) because he realized it wasn't worth it. He took up coding coz of his interest and coz of the fact that it pays well and worked pretty hard on it. He knew he wanted to be in startup ecosystem so he slogged a bit initially but within one and a half years he built such a rapport in the coding world that he is now known in developers community internationally, he contributes to open source and he is earning quite a hefty sum. The best part is now he gets to work on a lot of innovative ideas which makes his work more challenging and interesting which he ultimately wanted to do. So for me it's a simple straight forward concept, if you are confident enough and if you are really willing to put in your sweat and blood to whatever you wanna do, you will succeed eventually. Now it's up to you to decide whether you wanna play it safe or risk it all but make sure you don't have any regrets in your life later on thinking "I could have done it at that time if I would have tried."

I agree with Vijay's answer. Besides I know few people who started their ventures while in College. We all know how little work is there in undergrad, especially in a premiere college (lets be honest) so if you are motivated enough, start playing around,sitting in your dorm room or in computer lab. College in fact provides you a cushion, low cost of living, all resources easily available and lot of brains around to discuss anything. Although startups are lot of fun and a dream for many, but there is lot of romanticism associated with being an entrepreneur. It is lot of hard work and some people dont feel they want to do it, so no harm in finishing your college.

Well honestly do get in touch with me, I am always looking for motivated people for our startup.

No. I am a product developer with over 200 designs working successfully in the field. Almost all products were designed by me and my two core team members. All three of us started programming at the age of 18 and never completed graduation. Today almost every one who stay in Delhi/Noida has touched at least two of our designed products. I also teach electronics and programming to kids and find they are better learner than graduates when it comes to programming skills.