Dr. Kalyani Gandhi, Chairperson, NSRCEL 

There are no limits to human desires and aspirations. Like the numerous heads of the Hydra, another one grows to replace the one that is severed and both these traits are closely tied to human life. They bring change and progress in the world and only fade when life itself burns out.

Entrepreneurs are the epitomes of such desires and aspirations and are the poster boys for success in the business world. Although they inspire millions when they strike gold, they are prone to high risks and failures, which make them the most interesting case studies in the business world. In the earlier days, most entrepreneurs had to depend on their personal grit and a lot of luck to see their ideas come to life, but today support in kind and cash is more easily available, so the focus has shifted towards innovation and sustenance of those ideas.

One organization that has been doing a lot for the entrepreneur cause and has been bringing forth innovative ideas to life is the N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL).

NSRCEL was started in October 1999 with a generous endowment from Mr. Nadathur S Raghavan, the former Joint Managing Director of Infosys Technologies Ltd. The vision of the center is to be a world-class center of excellence for seeding, nurturing and promoting entrepreneurship with emphasis on start-ups and existing organizations with high growth potential.

Dr. Kalyani Gandhi, Chairperson, NSRCEL says "NSRCEL was set up at IIMB to encourage entrepreneurs to act upon their ideas, energy and talent to produce leading companies of the future. It aims at guiding budding entrepreneurs in carefully defining the opportunities they perceive and helps them access the resources they require to convert their dreams into reality. The activities of NSRCEL are varied and encompass such areas as teaching, research, short-term programs, seminars/panel discussions in the field of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship facilitation initiative and most importantly, the incubation facility for nurturing start-up companies. In short, NSRCEL is a knowledge and facilitation hub in the area of the entrepreneurship."

The facilities at the incubation center covers everything from infrastructure facilities like an aesthetically designed office, cubicle space with computers and Internet connectivity (24 x 7), photocopying, fax and phone facilities to providing a faculty guide/industry mentor, access to the IIMB library and computer center. The incubatees are also provided access to technology forums, angel investors and venture capitalists along with expert advice from a business consultant, chartered accountant and a banker.  They are also given invitations to seminars/panel discussions that are conducted by NSRCEL for entrepreneurs, thereby providing them with an excellent ambience for innovation.

The process for the selection is rather clear-cut. Applicant companies are first asked to submit an executive summary of their business plan to NSRCEL. While the preliminary evaluation of business idea and team is being done, the applicant goes through a round of discussion with the NSRCEL COO. The next round involves the applicant giving a presentation to the NSRCEL screening committee, which consists of IIM professors, Venture Capitalists, established entrepreneurs, etc and is followed by a detailed discussion regarding the applicants business plan, value proposition and future plans. On finding a company that fits into all criteria, a selection is made. At present, five companies are successfully undergoing the incubation process.

Ziva Software, a product-based company started by Ajay Sethia, a former Director at Oracle and a Hindustani and Carnatic music aficionado, builds innovative solutions for mobile information. The company's product lets end-users search and access the desired content via mobile phone technology with the least number of clicks through its patent-pending techniques.

Ajay says, "Ziva's business model reflects its desire to help its customers fully leverage the potential offered by the mobile channel. We have built a mobile web search platform that combines search techniques and social networking in a unique manner and makes it very intuitive and easy for all segments of people to access the desired content through their mobile devices. We have an exceptionally strong team with solid work experience with team members having earlier worked at well-known MNCs such as Oracle, Yahoo! Trilogy, etc"

Elina Networks on the other hand, develops products that simplify the network and IT infrastructure creation and management for distributed enterprises. They build secure, cost effective and remotely manageable networks with their products to create strong supply chains for retail chains and other sectors with hundreds of outlets spread out away from another.

Manish Gangey, CEO and founder of Elina and a 14-year veteran from the networking and telecom industry says "Elina offers products with a specialized network monitoring, management and administration service and creates a unique value proposition ensuring tight integration of customer's business processes with network infrastructure. Our value proposition helps create a uniform, secure and cost effective network and IT infrastructure for distributed enterprises. Our flagship product ENPAQ, is built with unique ability to run custom third party applications, integrated with WAN and LAN infrastructure and our VirtualPresence remote management server allows networks and applications to be monitored and managed remotely, thus addressing the real pain points of the customers."

Magic Lamp Software, another incubatee, is a software company that provides solutions to identify and prevent software quality and security issues for companies that use, maintain or develop software. Started by Sudheer Hangal and Dr. Sanjeev Krishnan, two former software architects from Sun Microsystems (U.S), Magic Lamp's solutions automatically detects software errors in usage of the Java language and core Java and J2EE libraries as well as enforces architecture, design or coding rules specific to a customer's application.

A look at the profiles of incubatees would indicate a technology leaning, which makes one wonder whether NSRCEL is looking only at I.T companies. Dr. Kalyani differs and says, "While it is true that we have had more software related companies; we have had other kinds of businesses incubated here. Previous incubatees like Meta I Technologies and Brain League IP services are not technology companies. The first one is a service-oriented company that provides admissions for colleges like Comed K, Kumaran's School and also conducts academic testing, assessment services and Corporate Testing. The latter is a company that deals with Intellectual Property rights and legal services. We do not give any special preference for IT companies. It so happens that being located in Bangalore we tend to attract IT related ventures and the IT related businesses also seem to be attracted by the incubation facilities we have. In the sense, since we don't have Research and Development facilities or hardware or a laboratory vestibule kind of thing for conducting experiments, we are less likely to be sought by chemical companies or any such companies dealing in that field. Bur we are certainly open to all kinds of startups - manufacturing, services, technical etc."

As if to echo the Chairperson's words, the profile of GLOPORE IMS reads as one of the few non-I.T. companies among the incubatees. Though not directly connected to technology; the IT Infrastructure Management Service (IMS) company works with clients as a strategic partner to serve their selective sourcing needs and works as an extension of internal CIO/IT team.

A Novell ONE Award winner at his former job at Novell, Satish Kumar, CEO and Chairman of GLOPORE IMS says "We had a good entrepreneur profile, market opportunity and a high level business plan when we walked into NSRCEL. Our GLOPORE IMS business model is built on the selective sourcing model and we offer our clients various benefits which let them focus on their core-business, maintain a good customer/user relationships, improve their ROI and productivity at lower TCO and effectively mitigate risk and improve their business processes."

Although Bangalore and Karnataka seems to be a focus for NSRCEL, companies from the neighboring states are soon catching up. Parigyan Informatics, a Hyderabad-based company that brings "on-demand" knowledge management to the decision-making clients with customized activity intelligence service provision, is another one of the current incubatees. The company is into research and development of scientific analytics and decision models for business and management and also combines market research and business data warehouses for enriched datasets, while providing infrastructure for all informatics needs.

Parigyan's entrance into the incubation program brings more hope to companies located in the other states. However the business world is a cruel place to be in. It toasts to successes and failures are completely ignored. Ultimately in this game, only the winners count. So breaking even and gaining profits is an important recipe of the success story.

How far has NSRCEL been successful in managing to groom successful companies?

Talking about the success stories, Dr. Gandhi says, "The success rate in the previous years has been good considering that we have only been around for the past five years. M/s Meta-I Technologies, who were incubated in NSRCEL are doing very well with branches in other cities in India. M/s Voicetech Solutions - provide Interactive Voice Response Telecom applications and Customer Relationship Management software, M/s Brainleague consultants - they are into Intellectual Property rights (IPR) and M/s Aparkosha Technologies providing Digital Signal Processing, are the few who have successfully graduated out of NSRCEL. " 

It is becoming more apparent that in the not-so-distant future, NSRCEL is going to be a point of focus for applications from not only other states, but also from smaller towns within Karnataka since these towns are currently becoming mini hubs for budding entrepreneurs. Since financial and infrastructure support is miniscule here, NSRCEL could be the much awaited Messiah for the entrepreneurial aspirant.

Sandesh Shenoy- Marcomm Specialist S7 Software Solutions, likes to write and blog. 

Issue BG69 Dec07

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