The Business Standard (Ahmedabad)
November 20, 2003

The Mumbai-based Wadhwani Foundation, in association with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), and four leading academic institutions, have launched a network with the goal of creating new entrepreneurs.

Called the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), the main activity of the network will be research on entrepreneurship development in the country. These institutions have already received $40,000 each as planning grant.

The foundation announced the selection of five leading academic institutions in India to join the original center – the Wadhwani Center for Entrepreneurship Development at Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, as the founding partners of NEN.

The five founding partners are IIM-A, Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Indian Institute of Technology – Mumbai (IIT), Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bangalore, and S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai.

These organizations, besides building their own entrepreneurial development programmes and activities, will help develop other centers around them.

The five partners were selected on the basis of their potential impact, the leadership qualities they posses from the directors to the faculties, the innovations they have created in the past and their ability to execute these innovations and in turn them into big programmes.

The IIM-A is one of the founding partners of NEN. The Center for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIM helps innovators commercialise their projects through an enterprise.

It also is involved in cutting edge research on innovation, technology management, entrepreneurship etc.

CIIE organizes workshops on areas of academic interest as well as programmes which would help innovators and entrepreneurs. The workshops bring experts from various fields to address issues of management of innovation and commercialisation process.

The Wadhwani Foundation has given $40,000 as a planning grant to IIM-A. With the help of the funds from the foundation, there would be an increase in the scope and frequency of some of the programmes which are conducted by CIIE.

These funds will also be utilized to develop a plan for a full scale entrepreneurial development center, as well as some entrepreneurial development activities.

Based on the strength of the plans developed over the next year, each institution will be eligible for further funding of up to $1 million.

Rakesh Basant, chairman, CIIE , said: “The seminar on new ventures which is of two days now will be held twice or thrice in a year instead of once in a year.”

He added: “The NEN membership would help us enhance the efficiency of all our activities. Access to industry, educational institutions and other network partners would get enhanced significantly. We can now undertake activities that are difficult to do on our own, be it research, training or incubation. NEN will also facilitate perfecting the network model of incubation.”

Laura Parkin, executive director, Wadhwani Founadation, said: “New entrepreneurs need support and if they get knowledge, skills and network it is more likely that the companies would be successful.”

She said: “IIM-A has tremendous strength in research and we are delighted the way they are leading one of research efforts for NEN.”

The Wadhwani Foundation is a non-profit organization founded by Romesh Wadhwani, an IT entrepreneur in Silicon Valley to help individuals achieve their full potential, regardless of their background.

The foundation funds non-profit efforts to accelerate entrepreneurship in emerging economies, and runs the Wadhwani Grant Programme to empower the disadvantaged.