Business Standard
December 4, 2003

Five new academic institutions will be covered under the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) programme. The Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani; Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad; Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai; Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore; and S P Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai; will each receive a grant of $40,000 as a part of the programme.

Each center will be a base for research, academic courses, curriculum development, training, mentorship and incubation, all geared towards entrepreneurial development activities.

“NEN will bring different players on to a common platform to share a variety of experiences and cooperate with each other in promoting the culture of entrepreneurship. The NEN effort will go a long way in contributing to the growth of the national economy,” S Venkateshwaran, director, BITS Pilani, said.

The Indian School of Business (Hyderabad) has already implemented the programme.

The NEN programme is projected to become a nationwide programme of several hundred such centers within academic institutions that will be instrumental in launching entrepreneurs. Each institutions covered under the programme will be able to utilize resources of other NEN partners.

The programme is being funded by the Wadhwani Foundation, a non-profit organization set up by Romesh Wadhwani, president and chairman of Symphony Technology Group, California. Wadhwani is an alumni of IIT, Mumbai.

The NEN programme, designed to accelerate entrepreneurship in developing countries, has committed non-financial resources and a planned grant to each of these institutes.

Based on the plans they develop and implement, each institute will be eligible for a further funding of up to $1 million spread over a few years.

An eight-member group comprising Rob Chernow of Kauffman Foundation, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw of Biocon, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Enterprises, Jerry Rao of Mphasis, Harsh Mariwala of Marico Industries, Howard H Stevenson of Harvard Business School and Wadhwani selected the five institutes.

“NEN is one of the most ambitious and exciting endeavors being launched in entrepreneurial development today. Unless more successful entrepreneurs, financiers, industrialists and academic institutions join us, we will not realize the potential of the NEN programme – which is to become the most effective launch – pad for new entrepreneurs worldwide,”Laura Parkin, executive director of the Wadhwani Foundation, said.