Detroit startups are turning to Ilitch School students to solve problems, and they’re delivering results

Students at the Mike Ilitch School of Business develop skills that are in demand by businesses from global enterprises to small family businesses. Warrior Consulting Group, a student organization at the Ilitch School, is putting these skills to use by pairing students with local startups to provide consultation on business challenges.

Since their founding five years ago, Warrior Consulting Group primarily served nonprofit organizations. Working with guidance from the student organization's faculty advisor, Kevin Ketels, associate professor of teaching of global supply chain management and director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation programs, they helped these charities solve problems involving finances, accounting, marketing, supply chain and other business functions.

Now, they have turned their attention to the private sector by connecting with startups at Newlab, a startup hub located at Michigan Central, only two miles away from the Ilitch School.

"Opportunities like this are a wonderful example of the Mike Ilitch School of Business's extensive and sophisticated commitment to entrepreneurship and experiential learning," said Virginia Franke Kleist, Dean of the Mike Ilitch School of Business. "By connecting our students with startups at Newlab, Warrior Consulting Group is giving them the opportunity to apply their business knowledge to real challenges while gaining firsthand insight into the entrepreneurial process. These connections also strengthen the Ilitch School's role within Detroit's thriving entrepreneurial community, where our students can learn from, contribute to, and help shape the next generation of innovative ventures in our wonderful city."

Making connections at Newlab

Krish Gulati, a senior studying accounting and finance at the Ilitch School, is the president of Warrior Consulting Group. He spent the last year making connections with these startups and offering them business expertise.

"Our initial goal was to serve nonprofits. That changed in 2025 when we took Bosch as our first major client," said Gulati. "We did an analysis of them and their competitors and offered suggestions on how Bosch could pivot in the future to grow with the car market in general."

With their first major client under their belt, Gulati started the search for their next big project. He was interning at Newlab during the summer of 2025, which gave him access to the startups that are using that space to launch their businesses.

"I would go around and talk to founders and tell them about the club, and that we want to work with the startups at Newlab," said Gulati. "It's a huge audience; it's part of the Detroit ecosystem. That's how we got our first clients. It was just me going up and talking to the founders and getting them to agree that student consulting would be great."

In Fall 2026, Warrior Consulting Group's members will be serving the needs of 14 startups at Newlab in finance, accounting, supply chain, management and any other area of business needed. Since they started working with startups in 2025, Warrior Consulting Group has placed over 170 students with 24 startups. To make sure that each startup gets the attention and expertise that they need, Gulati meets with the organizations to understand their pain points and assigns a team of students uniquely qualified to address them.

"We segment our projects based on three levels," said Gulati. "Observers, who are younger freshmen or sophomores who don't have that much experience. Consultants, who are experienced sophomores or early juniors who've had experience on Warrior Consulting Group projects or who have had internship experience in the past, and who know how to work with companies. Then we have team leads, which tend to be late juniors, early seniors. These students communicate directly with the founder, set expectations for the team, work on the projects themselves, and really dictate how the project is going to go. That's a lot of responsibility."

Solving problems and making an impact

As a student organization, Warrior Consulting Group was able to offer these startups consulting work at no cost. The work these students do has a huge impact on the operations and vitality of these organizations.

"We had one last semester that was an engineering company, and Newlab is very mobility heavy. We paired a couple of finance and marketing students with some engineering students who were involved to work together and build out the startup," said Gulati. "We even had a political science student on that team. There are a bunch of layers, different students and collaboration across departments."

Students working on this project developed their ability to work on a team with other professionals from different backgrounds, meet deadlines and project expectations, and come up with creative solutions, skills that will benefit them as they step into the workforce. Many of the startups were so impressed that they asked their consultants to continue their work after the initial consulting period was finished.

"The first semester alone we had a few founders who wanted to take students for full-time internships, and we had full-time offers from these companies as well," said Gulati. "It's huge for these students, you basically have 5-10 hours of work a week and you get to see the front end, the back end and how these companies work. I've seen people get internships and job offers."

First-year students also have a chance to get involved with some experiences they may not have had otherwise.

"Our freshmen get placements in these discovery programs at EY, Deloitte, and other big companies, and the experiences they had through Warrior Consulting Group projects helped them get those roles as well," said Gulati.

Entrepreneurship and Innovation thrive at the Ilitch School

This increased engagement with the Detroit startup ecosystem comes at a time when the Ilitch School is advancing its own entrepreneurship and innovation programs. The Ilitch School recently introduced a new major in Entrepreneurship and Innovation that prepares graduates for a diverse array of career paths, whether that means students work in venture capital firms, become founders themselves, work for other startups, or serve on corporate investment teams.

The Ilitch School Startup Technology Pitch Competition, hosted by the Entrepreneurship and Innovation program and the Department of Technology, Information Systems and Analytics , offers students an extracurricular opportunity to pitch their technology-enabled business ideas to a panel of venture capital professionals to win startup funds for their venture.

Internships also play a large role in an Ilitch School education. Students are encouraged to seek out internship opportunities through any resources available to them, including Handshake, the Career Services Office, career fairs and networking opportunities. Starting junior year, students can meet with their academic advisor to determine if they are eligible to receive credit ahead of participating in an internship. This allows students to engage in these experiential learning opportunities and receive credit toward their degrees for doing so.

These opportunities, alongside those offered by the Warrior Consulting Group student organization, make students at the Ilitch School well positioned to step into the workforce, ready to hit the ground running.

Gulati has big plans for the new semester and plans to expand the services Warrior Consulting Group offers to a wider audience.

"From here, we are planning to go beyond," said Gulati. "This semester we'll be working with TechTown and with Warrior Ventures, another student organization at the Ilitch School. We want Detroit-founded companies to go far. We want them to build and help the community in any way possible, and our students are dedicated to that mission.

-Patrick Bernas, Information Officer III