Entrepreneurs, do you have that Next Big Idea?

Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) has announced the launch of Next Big Idea, a business plan competition. It is sponsored by the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) under the aegis of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India and Intel.

"The process of taking the ideas to the next level and ultimately commercialisation, can be accelerated through provision of knowledge, expertise and policy support. This industry, academia and government partnership aims to provide precisely that under the Next Big Idea programme," said Harkesh Kumar Mittal, advisor and member secretary, National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board, Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. 

Next Big Idea aims to encourage innovation, create structure and process for the business plan competitions for leading academic institutions across the country so that the innovative ideas born through these competitions are taken forward to become real businesses. It also aims to create a platform where any individual or team can post their innovative ideas and seek mentoring, access to incubation and angel funds to help them create a real business.

"The need of the hour is not just to help speed up venture creation but also nurture the right ideas which have potential to become disruptive businesses of tomorrow. This unique public private partnership under the Next Big Idea programmes will provide potential entrepreneurs not just the opportunity to make their ideas into reality but will also provide them the opportunity to work with the ecosystem to make their future business sustainable," said a Intel spokesperson.

One more objective of this programme is to build capacity in academic institutions that conduct business plan competitions thereby helping in bettering the quality of business ideas originated from there. The capacity building through academic institutions include offering financial support to their competition and conducting a two day fully paid conference at IIM Bangalore to enable sharing of information best practices to conduct competitions.

"Next Big Idea seeks to provide a perfect opportunity for entrepreneurs to showcase their idea and get its attractiveness and viability evaluated by experts in an extremely competitive setting," asserts K Kumar, chairperson, NSRCEL.

The incentives to the 40 winning teams include a chance to be incubated and raise seed fund upto Rs 50 lakh from NSRCEL, one week of fully-paid workshop at IIM-Bangalore with intensive mentoring and an opportunity to interact with VCs; 10 cash prizes in the range of Rs 25,000 to Rs 1,50,000 and a sponsorship to participate in University of California, Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge for the top three teams.