Happy to announce that ET NOW, TiE Delhi & Lufthansa have come together for the third season of “Pioneering Spirit”, more details below.

Pioneers of today are once again looking for pioneers of tomorrow in the path breaking TV series, Pioneering spirit – A product of Lufthansa, now in Season 3.

In the extremely successful Season 2, ten budding entrepreneurs like you got an opportunity to transform their business. Grand Prize winner Saumil Majmudar of EduSports won a sponsorship by Canaan Partners to a business programme at Cambridge. In addition, each episodic winner received a coveted TiE mentorship and a Lufthansa Business Class return ticket to Europe.

You could be next. Share your business story for a chance to meet business pioneers face to face, impress them with your business plan, and take your business to the next level.

You can register by clicking here

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Since the past few years, TiE Delhi has been supporting various student initiatives on entrepreneurship. Even though our programs are designed keeping the entrepreneur in mind, we have been promoting entrepreneurship on campus by way of providing knowledge support to various e-cells in different Colleges, Institutes, Business Schools, Engineering Colleges etc across the country. This year, TiE Delhi as part of their enhanced and more active engagement with the youth, we are delighted to announce “All Asia Business Plan Competition 2012 in association with Rice University”

About All Asia Business Plan Competition

The world’s largest and the richest business plan competition comes to India this time with TiE Delhi – NCR hosting the All Asia Finals in February 2012.

With a $1 million plus prize money for the winning team at the RICE University global business plan competition in the US, the AABPC is a perfect opportunity for start-ups, early stage companies which have at least one graduate student as part of the core team. The Asia leg of the AABPC includes participation from across:

1. India

2. Malaysia

3. Singapore

4. Japan

5. Melbourne

6. Sydney

7. Dubai

8. Lahore

9. Karachi

10. Islamabad

Last date of submission of Executive Summary: 9th December 2011

Submit your Executive Summaries by logging online at: http://tiedelhi2012.istart.org |

Log-in/Register on Chapter Home page – Create account – Fill in application – Upload Executive Summary

Team Composition

At least one graduate student must be a member of the venture’s start-up management team. All the graduate students are allowed to participate in the competition including, Executive MBA’s, MD Candidates, other Master’s Candidates and PhD Candidates. The maximum number of student competitors on a team participating at all level competitions is five (5), although there is no restriction on the total size of the venture’s founding team.

TiE All Asia Business Plan Competition: Rewards

1. Prizes in excess of $1.5 million

2. Additional prizes for elevator pitch and company showcase

3. 2011 had the first team walk away with $6,41,600 worth of rewards including $350,000 investment

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For folks looking at raising funds, the Deal Flow Session@TiEcon Delhi 2011 will provide a good platform to pitch your plan to renowned investors. And yes this is a close door session, given below are the details. TiEcon Delhi is the largest entrepreneurship symposium in the ecosystem and typically sees close to 1000 delegates participating spanning entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders.

The Deal Flow Session at TiEcon Delhi 2011 provides a one stop platform for high potential entrepreneurs to present their business plans to some of the leading national & International investors to meet their funding objectives.

The investors present at the deal flow session are an ideal mix of prominent Angel Investors & leading Venture capital firms who are keenly looking at investing in high potential businesses. Over the years, the deal flow sessions at TiEcon have attracted a whole host of prominent Venture Capital Firms, Private Equity Players, Angel Investor Groups and HNI’s.

The plans received would then go through a short listing & mentoring process led by a screening committee with representation from renowned Angel Networks and venture capitalists. Feedback and suggestions given by the screening committee will be shared with the short listed companies.

In addition, TiE Delhi’s Angel Partner – Indian Angel Network would also be keen to look at the shortlisted entrepreneurs for the IAN incubation services.

TiE extends this unique opportunity to the following

Entrepreneurs – Looking for Angel Funding
Entrepreneurs – Looking for VC Funding

Some of the investors who have interacted or closed investments on the TiE Platform are:

Indian Angel Network, Canaan Partners, Baring Pvt. Equity Partners, DFJ, Matrix Partners, Seed Fund, Blue Run Ventures,Mumbai Angels Network, Erasmic Ventures, Ojas Ventures, Evolvence, Gaja Capital, Gujarat Venture Finance, SIDBI Ventures, Punjab Venture Capital, Google, Intel Capital, India Value Fund, New Path Ventures, IndoUS Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Sun Group, Motorola Venture Capital, Lumis Partners, One97 Mobility Fund, RVCF, Sierra Ventures, Helion Ventures, SAIF Partners & many more….

Companies that would like to present their business plans at the above forum would be required to send in their business plans in the template to Shivam Dang– shivam@tienewdelhi.org latest by Sep 10th, 2011.

For more details you can visit TiEcon Delhi.

Download the template here

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Your last chance to present your business case to the pioneers!

You could be the next pioneer India has been waiting for! Share your story and take your business to the next level with the second season of Pioneering spirit – A product of Lufthansa, a unique television series on ET NOW.

Submit your business story to win:

• A sponsorship by Canaan Partners to a business program at Cambridge
• A coveted TiE mentorship, and
• A Lufthansa Business Class return ticket to a destination of your choice in Europe

Last year eight young entrepreneurs did exactly that, shared their unique business ideas with pioneers of today and are on their way to become pioneers of tomorrow.

So if you are an entrepreneur I would highly recommend you apply, it’s a very interesting opportunity with a whole bundle of benefits that we’ve built around it including great media visibility, investor interaction, access to senior industry folks, mentors and international entrepreneurial network.

The Pioneers are people like Chanda Kochar, Swati Piramal, Gautam Thapar, AD Singh, Harsh Mariwala, Kishore Biyani, Rashesh Shah, Zia Mody, Sam Balsara, Saurabh Srivastava, Pradeep Gupta, Alok Mittal among others.

Register now at http://pioneeringspirit.in/

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YourStory, is the online partner for Microsoft BizSpark’s India Startup Challenge, now enables access to the various benefits of the BizSpark program to entrepreneurs. Here’s a sneak peek into all the support that startups enrolling in the program stand to receive:

- Get immediate access to current full-featured Microsoft development tools, platform technologies, and production licenses of server products (including Windows Azure Platform) for use in developing and bringing to market innovative and interoperable solutions.

- Receive two technical support incidents per startup. Each incident is managed by Microsoft until they are resolved, no matter how many calls it takes.

- Receive business development and technical training at highly subsidized costs or in many cases, no costs.

- Receive access to MSDN Ultimate managed newsgroups, online library, and so on.

- Get connected to BizSpark Network Partners around the world—incubators, investors, advisors, government agencies, and hosters—that are equally involved and vested in software-fuelled innovation and entrepreneurship, and who will provide a wide range of support resources, including expert mentoring.

Startups can use BizSpark Hosting and IT operations servers for production use: that is, to host and manage their “software as a service” (SaaS) application that is accessed over the Internet by their customers. Startups can self-host, or contract with a BizSpark Hosting Partner.

BizSpark hosting servers include Windows Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, and Office SharePoint Server for Internet Sites products. BizSpark IT operations servers include System Center server products.

And many more benefits if you are interested and want to know how to enroll click here

Oh and I did mention there is NO FEE to enroll in the program

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Pioneering Spirit a product of Lufthansa is a unique television series will showcase the lives of business pioneers – and give entrepreneurs a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be selected as ‘pioneers of tomorrow’ and win:

• A Lufthansa Business Class return ticket to a destination of your choice in Europe
• A coveted TiE mentorship, and
• A sponsorship by Canaan Partners to an international B-School program

The call for entries for Season II is now open.

You can send in your business story and innovative strategy that you believe can help your business take the giant leap to catapult you to the forefront among business leaders of tomorrow by clicking on this link.

Three entrepreneurs with the most compelling ideas will get a chance in each of the nine episodes to present their business plan face to face with a doyen of their industry.

One lucky entrepreneur will be picked in each episode to win a Lufthansa Business Class ticket and a mentorship by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). And finally, one grand prize winner will be selected of these nine to win the B-school sponsorship from Canaan Partners.

This is definitely an interesting opportunity for entrepreneurs who are doing something innovative to be showcased on national television!!!

For more details and to register your entry log on to http://www.pioneeringspirit.in.

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My dear friend Vijay Anand has launched the Resident Programme which is a Co-working Initiative by The Startup Centre. The initiative is primarily driven to accomodate founding teams of early stage startups that are probably working on their ideas, and prototypes and in most circumstances stand to benefit in the company of like minded entrepreneurs who are also building products.

The Resident programme, will function in batches and the call for applications for the first batch are open and will close on April 22nd. They are looking for 10 – 15 Teams (20 individual in total) who will be working out of the TSC premises. This would be out of our premise in Chennai at the Alsa Mall in Egmore.

There is a certain cost attached to it. Single Founders working out of there will be charged a monthly fee of Rs. 7500 and Two founder teams will be charged Rs. 10,000 per month and the period of this service is for a period of six months. The intent is that in six months once your prototype, and first set of clients are identified, and as the team expands, it might be time to move out. And Yes we are purposefully leaning towards two founder teams (a startup might be too much for one person)

10 Compelling Reasons for You to be Part of the TSC Resident Program – I could not but agree more on this, we need similar initiatives in other cities in India.

1.Imagine a Hackathon/BarCamp like environment everyday of the year! It’s Entrepreneurs working as if their life depends on it everyday—sitting, maybe at the edge of their seats, at home reading TechCrunch and wondering what’s happening in Silicon Valley. At TSC, you are not alone; you’ll have buddies who are entrepreneurs themselves, some of them at the same stage like you.

2. A group of Entrepreneurs who have their “babies” (ideas just taking shape as a startup) at the same stage of business progression similar to yours provide a fantastic “buddy” support system to sharpen your idea and deepen your business value proposition. Most ideas simply are shallow to survive the first cut of market reality. But you’d have to be around awesome Entrepreneurs, like at TSC, to help you craft a go-to-market strategy like a knife through butter.

3. Entrepreneurs learn something new everyday, and they learn things the hard way, maybe through experiences. But how about making your learning curve shorter? With a group of Entrepreneurs around you to give their experience in TSC, you will refrain from a mis-steps straightaway. And learning something new from their experience is invaluable. If the beta testing of TSC is anything to go by, we are learning something new, just by being an observer.

4. The Hub at TSC aggregates the energy of the Local Startup Ecosystem and cross- functional learning. Don’t miss out! Be at the Centre of it.

5. Share and Borrow the skill sets of each other at TSC. If you are a designer, trade that skill for someone’s skill to architect your system. We know you might not have the money to hire people, but you might have a skill to trade. Hustling is part of the Startup process.

6. Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. It may be a moment’s weakness in which you might give up or laze around a target. At TSC, experienced Mentors are around to poke and nudge when required, to keep you on target. They won’t do your work for you, but will certainly keep you on track when you need a voice of reason.

7. Form the Apex of the Startup Ecosystem and the Benefit of Association, with a brand that carries the trust of people who have been pioneers of the Indian Startup Ecosystem. Need to say more?

8. Leverage the TSC brand to attract talent, be it interns or a workforce to take your vision forward.

9. Public opinion would tell you that we are based out of a location that’s quite close to the heart of the city—in a kickass address, with proximity to eateries that are up through the night and importantly at a cost that is startup- friendly!

10. Did we tell you that we have an accelerator programme coming up? Rumor is that some of these companies will make the cut to be part of that, if not, still go on to become great companies in their own way.

So there are less than four more days to go, so please the earlier you apply, the earlier you get a meeting, and the verdict. Make use of it, before its too late.

Applications are open at http://rapply.thestartupcentre.com

For more details on The Startup Centre log on too:- http://www.thestartupcentre.com/

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NASSCOM EMERGE 50 celebrates the entrepreneurial and innovative efforts of India’s emerging start-ups in the IT sector, ranging from the IT, BPO and Products space to Engineering Services, Animation, E-commerce, and the Web. We recognize and showcase 50 SMEs who have demonstrated excellence through their business models and rapid financial growth and who have engineered innovative products, services and technologies that allow them to realize a higher margin. By showcasing novel ideation and success at the startup and early growth stages, NASSCOM EMERGE 50 aims to encourage and foster a culture of creativity and innovation in the IT industry and act as a catalyst for the vibrant growth of SMEs, an essential element in the growth of the Indian economy.

Companies can be nominated for innovation and extraordinary success in the categories of Growth, Markets (non-traditional / domestic), Products, and Services. This year the categories have been expanded to include EMERGE Partnerships (emerging companies partnering for technology, sub-contracting or business development purposes) and EMERGE Start-ups (products/services developed by a start-up which is less than 2 years old or which clocks less than INR 2 crore in annual revenues).

Nominations are invited from fast-growing Indian IT companies which are convinced that their achievements are worthy of mention and that are eager to share their experiences and learnings with other SMEs. Shortlisted companies will be invited to present to a jury comprising eminent people drawn from the industry. The jury members will then identify the winners for each category based on specific criteria.

Winners in each category will also be featured in the NASSCOM EMERGE newsletter.

This year, Zinnov, a management consulting company, is partnering with NASSOM in this initiative. Nominations close on the 28th of June 2010. So visit the NASSCOM EMERGE website at http://www.nasscom.in/emerge50 to file your nomination and take your place in the well-deserved ranks of SMEs that work furiously to boost the Indian economy.

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