The rise of entrepreneurship has been a dominant feature of India’s economic expansion in recent years. In the past decade, venture capital and private equity (PE) investment in the country has grown from $20 million in 1996 (about Rs70 crore then) to an estimated $13.5 billion in 2007, according to data compiled by Evalueserve, a global research and analytics firm.
The main protagonists in this story of booming opportunity so far have been start-up entrepreneurs looking for investors seeking a fair return on capital.
But now, as the flow of money quickens with investors expected to channel fresh funds of more than $48 billion into new businesses by 2010, the focus is moving towards building a system of education and training to create a pool of people with innovative ideas and skills.
Xiaohong He, professor, Quinnipiac University, Connecticut. Photo: Hemant Mishra / Mint
The academic sector, with a slew of training programmes and collaborative studies, is, therefore, emerging as a significant player in the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem.
In 2005, 16 colleges across the country sent faculty members to the entrepreneurship educators course conducted by the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN); at the end of 2007, 269 colleges across the country had signed on to the programme—an initiative of the Wadhwani Foundation, which is focused on accelerating entrepreneurship in emerging economies, and has trained more than 470 faculty members in Indian colleges so far.
At the end of January, the NS Raghavan Centre of Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) in the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B), in collaboration with the Singapore-based Universitas 21 Global, a distance learning educator, will start a programme for entrepreneurial training in family-owned businesses.
Both NSRCEL and the Stanford Technology Ventures Programme (STVP), the entrepreneurship centre at Stanford University’s School of Engineering, provide faculty and learning material for the NEN programme, which trains teachers who can in turn teach entrepreneurship as an academic course to college students across India.
“The challenge is no longer about the entrepreneur finding money; for the first time in India, there is a confluence of money and very smart venture capitalists who can nurture businesses,” says Vijay Angadi, managing director of Novastar International Fund, an early stage venture capital firm, who feels that a shortage of skilled people is the most important threat facing the Indian economy.
While the initiatives by NEN and at IIM-B are aimed at nurturing the entrepreneurial instinct in students, industry watchers feel that even people running their own businesses can benefit from a study of the subject.