New Delhi: The Tata NEN Hottest Startups Awards campaign, an ambitious attempt at the largest start-up competition in India covering some 1,000 ventures that are less than five years old, is only three weeks old but has been dogged by questions in the blog world.
The organizers of the competition, for which Mint is the official print partner, have come under fire in at least three blogs which allege that the National Entrepreneurship Network, or NEN, a non-profit organization aimed at encouraging start-ups, has acted unprofessionally. One such instance involved NEN writing to a start-up that it had been nominated by Pluggd.in, a blog that profiles and reviews Indian start-ups. This was incorrect, said Pluggd.in on its blog.
Laura Parkin, executive director, National Entrepreneurship Network.
In an interview, Laura Parkin, executive director of NEN, concedes the error. Pluggd.in hadn’t nominated the start-up and its name had been merely obtained from a list of start-ups developed by Pluggd.in. NEN used several lists, including those from The Indus Entrepreneurs and industry lobby Confederation of Indian Industry, or CII. Edited excerpts:
There has been some talk in blogosphere that some processes followed by NEN in the start-up competition have not been professional. Questions have been raised on forcible nominations following a blog post by TringMe founder Yusuf Motiwala. What is the issue?
The issue with TringMe was the nomination was online and he emailed the contact person (to withdraw it). Unfortunately, there was an internal miscommunication so we did not close the loop in bringing the nomination down. The minute we found out that, we immediately apologized, took the nomination down. We’ve now created three email IDs so that requests from participants don’t get lost in any way. If you want to change your nomination, email changes@hotteststartups.in; to withdraw, withdraw@hotteststartups.in; and the third is to reconfirm you want your nomination to go online at confirm@hotteststartups.in
Now, with every single step, when we email the entrepreneur, we include a reminder that if you want to change or withdraw, here are the email addresses to do so.
Is it possible for someone other than the entrepreneur to nominate the company?
No, it is actually not possible to force a nomination. If we’ve heard about you or somebody else has and told us about you, our first step is to assign an internal contact person who will send you an email saying so and so has nominated you and do you want to participate. If you say no, it ends there. If you say yes, we email you the nomination form. The nomination form is only filled out by the entrepreneur (or someone he nominates); we do not fill it out. It takes at least an hour so it can’t be done by others accidentally. TringMe had already filled out the nomination form and wanted to withdraw later. Even if a company self-nominates online, we still review it and check with the entrepreneur.