NASSCOM to set up Entrepreneurship Club

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE, SEPT. 23. To boost entrepreneurship in the IT sector, the National Association of Software Services Companies (NASSCOM) is setting up an Entrepreneurship Club soon. This club will be operational from October.

Participating at the seminar "Cyberentrepreneurship 2000 -- an emerging individual and corporate agenda," here today, the NASSCOM President, Mr. Dewang Mehta, said the club would act as a facilitator to promote entrepreneurship. It would focus on three areas such as software development, IT-enabled services and e- commerce and dot.coms.

Of the 760 members, around 150 had agreed to act as mentors. In fact, they would be acting as "angel investors." The concept of an "angel investor" was slowly picking up but had not yet taken off in India, he said and added that entrepreneurs were approaching venture capitalists directly. This trend should change.

Stating that the club would funnel flow of funds to entrepreneurs, Mr. Mehta said, there were 86 venture capitalists registered with NASSCOM. They had agreed to fund such ventures.

The club, he said, would meet once in a month. Initially, it would meet in Delhi and later hold meetings at eight important cities such as Bangalore, Chennai and so on. Seminars and meets would be part of its activities to create awareness about entrepreneurship in which experts would share their success stories.

He said a website giving details about the club would be hosted soon. It would provide details, procedures to be followed and other vital information needed by entrepreneurs. The site would he ready in a month's time. There would be no Government participation in this venture.

Later, talking to presspersons, he said NASSCOM had held talks with the IT Ministry and the CBDT on the issue of offering a concession to the IT-enabled sector. After vetting by the IT Ministry, it was now pending with the Law Ministry. The sector would get the concession soon.

IT-enabled services in India had a good scope. During the current year it was estimated to be around Rs. 4,000 crores, and Rs. 6,500 crores next year.

Pointing out that it was estimated that there would be two million Internet users through the cable network, Mr. Mehta said vernacular sites would make a dent in it. To meet the growing demand, NASSCOM would start vernacular domain name registration from next January.

NASSCOM, which had launched "Operation Bandwidth" would soon launch "Operation Knowledge." There was a need for data on the exact requirement of human knowledge required to meet domestic and global needs, Mr. Mehta added.

The seminar was organised by the Department of Management Studies - IISC, with incubation support from the Forum for Entrepreneurship Development (FED) of NIAS. Edurite Technologies was the partner host. More than 250 delegates attended the two- day meet.

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