Not able to set up a virtual environment with venv

[mohanp06]

I am new to Python. While going through the tutorials, I came to know that we should set up a virtual environment before installing any Python packages. So I tried it. It is creating the new environment directory but I am getting the following error:

Error:
Command '['/home/mohanp/programming/python/environments/test_env/bin/python3', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip']' returned non-zero exit status 1.

When I run the 'source' command to activate this newly created environment, it does not work because there is nothing inside the bin folder of the newly created environment directory test_env.

How do I overcome this hurdle and get started with Python?

System Details:

System: Linux Mint 18
Python: 3.7.4

Many Thanks.