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The Asian Age (National)
April 7, 2003
The non-profit Wadhwani Foundation which was established
to accelerate entrepreneurship in emerging economies, launched
the National Entrepreneurship Network, a network of entrepreneurial
development centers, located within leading academic institutions
in India. The foundation sees entrepreneurs as critical drivers
of economic growth, and entrepreneurship as an important tool
for self-improvement. NEN is the foundation’s initiative
to inspire, educate and support new entrepreneurs.
Each center offers courses, skill-building exercises, networking
activities and mentorship to aspiring entrepreneurs. The goal
is to build NEN into a network of 100 centers over the next
five years.
The foundation
is competition to select
from among the leading country. These will be multi-stage
process,
five winners from 15
of renowned
Naina Lal Kidwai from Marico Industries,
Biocon India, Howard University and Romesh Foundation
and |
| The National Entrepreneurship
Network (NEN) set up by Wadhwani Foundation
is a group of entrepreneurial development
centers that aim at inspiring, educating and
supporting them. The foundation is currently
busy organizing a nation-wide competition
to select the first affiliates of NEN |
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hosting
a nation-wide
the first affiliates for NEN, academic institutions
in the selected through a transparent culminating in
the selection of short listed finalists by a panel international
judges including HSBC, Harsh Mariwala of
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw from Stevenson from Harvard Wadhwani
of the Wadhwani Symphony Technology Group. |
The winners of the competition will receive non-financial support
and funding in the range of $10,000 to $50,000, the amount depending
on the level and scale of their proposed activities.
The funding is intended to support the development of a plan
for a full-scale entrepreneurial development center in the
following years and some current entrepreneurial development
activities. Based on the strengths of the plans developed,
the institutions will each be eligible for further funding
of $250,000 to $1 million, spread over many years, from Wadhwani
Foundation, to support the development of full-scale entrepreneurial
development centers. The foundation would expect the institutions
to raise matching funds.
Speaking about the initiative, Laura Parkin, executive director,
of the foundation said the foundation’s goal is to create
new jobs and economic growth for India.
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