The Hindu Business Line : Inspiring entrepreneurship

Founded in 2002, the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) is a not-for-profit organisation working to inspire, educate and support new and future entrepreneurs in India. The organisation's goal is to help launch thousands of new entrepreneurs in India, who will then create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the country. NEN's initial focus is on students and young people, and it is working with several of India's top education institutions to help create world-class and high-impact entrepreneurship programmes on their campuses.

At the helm of NEN, founded in 2002 by the Wadhwani Foundation, is Laura A. Parkin, the organisation's Executive Director. A serial entrepreneur and former venture capitalist, she has 20 years' experience of successfully founding and funding start-up ventures, both in the for-profit and non-profit arenas. Excerpts from an interview with Parkin:

What are the key ingredients of the high-impact entrepreneurship programmes NEN helps to build in academic institutions?

A recent McKinsey-Nasscom report estimates that India needs at least 8,000 new businesses to achieve its target of building a $87 billion IT sector by 2008. These figures resonate NEN's belief that there is a need to launch thousands of new entrepreneurs, who in turn will create hundreds of thousands of much-needed valuable jobs for India.

NEN works with institutes across disciplines including engineering, management, arts, science and commerce, information technology and business schools. We are currently working with 164 top-tier academic institutes in 12 regions of India, reaching over 175,000 students on their campuses. Once an institute becomes a member of NEN, it has access to a wide range of resources and programmes to initiate and extend their own entrepreneurship programmes. NEN also facilitates the sharing of activities, events and resources across the network.

How does the Indian entrepreneurial spirit compare to what you have observed in other countries? Are there any enduring myths about entrepreneurship that you battle?

Currently, India has some of the best global talent, which has the required technical and knowledge skill to take on the entrepreneurial challenge. Today, India is witnessing the emergence of a large number of entrepreneurs, but there is definitely potential for many more. Many professionals graduating from premier institutes are making a conscious decision of realizing their dreams and starting the own ventures. The success of the homegrown IT industry is a great example of the potential Indians have and shows that we are not far behind from other countries. To encourage the entrepreneurship climate in India we require more support from the Government and society. One of the enduring myths is that entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial skills are limited to those people starting companies. Actually, entrepreneurship is an outlook, which, combined with entrepreneurial skills, helps people succeed in endeavours across all dimensions.

Is there a pattern in contemporary entrepreneurship that is different from what India has seen earlier? What are the shifts?

The openness of the economy, changes in regulations, new technologies that connect the world, increased availability of equity finance and dismantling of the `licence Raj' have created opportunities that simply did not exist earlier. The pace of change now occurring in India throws up opportunities for new companies to get started across many different industries. Young people are responding to these increased opportunities — entrepreneurship and the inclination to start companies is now expanding in the middle class, beyond the more traditional business communities.

Can you give examples of a few remarkable entrepreneurial ventures that NEN has worked with?

NEN's primary focus is to work with academic institutions across the country to help them ramp up their entrepreneurship programmes on campuses. Its strength lies in its association with its co-founding institutions — IIT-Bombay, IIM-Ahmedabad, BITS Pilani, SP Jain Management Institute, Mumbai and IBAB Bangalore; along with other institutions, like IIIT Bangalore, ISB Hyderabad, Jyoti Nivas College, Sir MVIT, MSRIT and Mount Carmel College to name a few. Some of these institutions have had remarkable successes building programmes and engaging students, and many have spawned great entrepreneurial ventures. NEN also facilitates a vibrant community for new and future entrepreneurs, and works closely with successful entrepreneurs and investors in the country .

On the challenges NEN faces.

We have two types of challenges that we face. NEN is itself a new type of venture — a social venture with very large goals. NEN therefore faces a number of challenges as an organisation: how to achieve scale without losing quality. How to reach out to the secondary and tertiary towns in India, where young people do not have the access to resources of those young people based in metros.

I have to say that it's really a challenge of reaching out to people outside the metros. The energy and the hunger of the young people to learn about entrepreneurship is amazing. The commitment of the Directors, Principals and Faculty of the NEN member institutes is truly impressive. However, the institutes themselves face some challenges in dealing with the university system that makes it very difficult to adopt new courses or introduce changes to curriculum and syllabi. This presents acute challenges to making sure that students, today, get the education they need to make the most of India's opportunities.

And young entrepreneurs, in fact all entrepreneurs, of course face challenges in the environment: regulatory barriers, lack of infrastructure and lack of moral support, many times.

Do entrepreneurs get the funding they need?

There is much more venture funding available today than ever before. Certainly, there is plenty of money in the private equity space. According to a recent report by Evalueserve research over 44 US-based VC firms are now seeking to invest heavily in start-ups and early-stage companies in India. India is clearly being perceived as a country to make money.

The Wadhwani Foundation, of which NEN is a part, supported some research done by Rafiq Dossani regarding the availability of early stage capital, and he found that despite the increased availability of venture funding in India, we do still have a shortage of very early-stage funding. It will take some time for more angel investors and other seed stage investors to enter the ecosystem.

Any changes that are necessary to instil entrepreneurship in students? Does a B-school education give an edge to wannabe entrepreneurs?

Today, huge numbers of young people are hungry to learn more about entrepreneurship — the key is to combine that passion with the knowledge and skills that will help them be more successful. Some of the key skills include: opportunity evaluation, raising and leveraging resources, communications and sales. If they are given ample opportunity to practise these skills in the relatively safe and risk-free environment of an academic institute, young people, when they do start ventures, will have higher chances of success.

In fact, the younger people are when starting to learn these skills, the better it is. We would encourage entrepreneurship education to start at the school level.

Business or management education does expose students to important subjects such as accounting and finance — certainly it's useful to have an understanding of the basics of business. However, knowledge of an industry like hotel management or a technical area, like an engineering discipline, can help young people have an important sense of the opportunities, so by no means is a management education required for entrepreneurial success. In fact, some research in the US has even shown that receiving a management degree actually lowers the likelihood of someone starting a company!

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