Business Today has an article on incubation programs at various business schools in India. I found the changing face of incubator programs like IIM-B's NSRCEL (sponsored by Infosys co-founder Nadathur S. Raghavan) to be most interesting part of the article:
Arun Natarajan is the Editor of TSJ Media, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of TSJ Media's Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.
Initially, NSRCEL started by offering cash awards to the best business plans of IIM students, who would partake in an annual competition meant for the purpose. However, within two years, the centre realised that while the plans sounded great on paper, few of the winning students wanted to pursue them. Instead, "they were looking for the glory of winning the competition," says (Mathew) Manimala (Professor of Entrepreneurship). So instead of giving the winning students cash, the centre decided to fund their business plans. When that didn't yield the desired results either, the centre broadbased its scope to fund anybody with a good business plan.
NSRCEL, though, isn't the only one doing so. At ICFAI's entrepreneurship centre, the funding is not just open to all, there's no upper or lower limits to it as well.
Arun Natarajan is the Editor of TSJ Media, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of TSJ Media's Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.