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``At Ernst & Young we want to support entrepreneurial spirit.''

Ratna Bhushan

The countdown to the second Entrepreneur of the Year Awards programme, hosted by management consultancy firm, Ernst & Young and co-sponsored by Nasdaq, has begun. The awards ceremony will be held later this month.

The awards, proprietary to Ernst & Young, were instituted worldwide in 1986 in the US and are now given away in 20 countries, including India. The programme is expected to be extended to 30 countries by 2002. V.V. Ranganathan, National Director of the pr ogramme and a partner at Ernst & Young, spoke to Catalyst about the event. Excerpts:

What is the kind of response the nominations for the Entrepreneur of the Year Award have generated?

The response, in one word, has been phenomenal. Ernst & Young had announced the beginning of its search for entrepreneurial excellence in May this year, which is when we also declared open the nominations for this year's awards. The nominations closed in July. But, there's been a curious fallout. Not many respondents have been able to fill the forms with all the required details. The information required to fill the forms is both financial and non-financial. Unless the entrepreneurs have a story to tell , they are unable to complete the forms. For example, a nominee needs to be an owner or manager, and primarily responsible for the recent performance of the company, which should be at least two years old. Founders of public companies are also eligible f or nomination, if the founder is still active in the top management. So, in a sense, the first stage of elimination happens at the time of filling-in the forms itself. However, we do expect very good nominations this year.

Two independent journalists hired by Ernst & Young are carrying out a verification process, to check whether all the information given in the forms is factually correct. This also involves field interviews.

Can you throw some light on the kind of people who have filed the nominations?

Until such time that the entire sifting procedure is through, we cannot really analyse the demographics of the people who have applied for the award.

But, in general, I can say that entrepreneurs sometimes get the feeling they are behind the wheel of a race car. They need to keep their eyes not only on the horizon, but on the rear view mirror as well to see who is gaining.

How different is this year's award from last year's?

In terms of the number of forms, my guesstimate is that we will roughly get the same number of forms as last year. That's because the number of independently-floated businesses have not risen dramatically in the past year, except for the ICE and services sector.

However, against the four categories that the awards were given away for last year, the number of categories for this year has been increased manifold. Among these are health care and life sciences, start-ups, family entrepreneur, master entrepreneur and manager entrepreneurs. Then, there are industry award categories such as manufacturing, services, ICE, healthcare and life sciences.

What about the jury members?

The jury for the awards selection is being chaired by Deepak Parekh, Chairman of HDFC and will have five other members. The other jury members are Anand Mahindra, Tarun Das, Tejendra Khanna and Sudhir Jalan.

Last year, we had Amit Mitra, Isher Judge Ahluwalia, B.M. Munjal and N. Kumar as members of the jury.

How does an event of this nature help entrepreneurs?

This is an internationally aligned programme. Winners at this event will be eligible to represent India at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year international conference to be held in California, in early November. By celebrating the achievements of outstanding entrepreneurs, we attempt to create a phenomenal atmosphere of role models. Take last year's winners _ Zee Telefilms' Subhash Chandra, NIIT's Rajendra S. Pawar, K. Raghavendra Rao of Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals who won the entrepreneu r of the year award for manufacturing, and Satyam Computer Services' B. Ramalinga Raju who was awarded the entrepreneur of the year in the services category. Each of these people have left an indelible mark on the Indian business scenario and a lot of pe ople want to emulate them.

Another recent trend we have observed is that a lot of people these days want to be entrepreneurs. They do not want to take on regular nine-to-five jobs.

How does organising such an event help Ernst & Young as an organisation?

Such an event adds to the brand equity of the organisation. We want to be perceived as a company empathetic to entrepreneurs. To sum up, at Ernst & Young, we want to support entrepreneurial spirit.

Take last year's event. It helped showcase prominent Indian entrepreneurs on a global platform. The event showed Indian talent to the world.

What about issues such as the famous Indian bureaucracy bottlenecks, red tapism and corruption that are known to stymie entrepreneurial efforts?

That is no longer true. Attitudes of the authorities are, to a large extent, changing for the better. How else does one justify that India is the first and only country in Asia where the programme has been implemented.

How have you been generating visibility for the event?

We have rolled out a print campaign in prominent mainline business publications to generate awareness about the awards.

What about visibility on the international scale?

We have tied up with the US-based Kauffman Centre for entrepreneurial leadership to incorporate research into the Entrepreneur of the Year programme. India is among the fifteen countries globally to participate in this research which has six sections _ c ompany background, strategic content, strategic process, internationalisation, entrepreneurial posture and environment focus. The research seeks to find out how outstanding entrepreneurs and their companies excel in a competitively global environment.

Is another event such as the Entrepreneur of the Award programme in India in the pipeline?

No. We do not foresee any diversification of the event. The programme is 14 years old internationally, and is in its second year in India. It took a long time to evolve.

Pic.: V. V. Ranganathan, National Director, Ernst & Young.