The Venture Intelligence Blog

To start with Mumbai- & Pune-based entrepreneurs Harsh Mariwala, who has steered Marico to grow in sales from Rs. 40 lac in 1971 to Rs. 4,000 crore today, has launched a foundation - ASCENT (short for Accelerating the SCaling up of ENTerprises) - that will identify entrepreneurs with potential and enable them in their growth journey. ASCENT offers a unique and powerful ” self-help” platform through the formation of TRUST GROUPS of 10 Entrepreneurs each. Each Trust Group will comprise non-competitive, diverse groups of entrepreneurs. We aim to start with 10 TRUST groups in Mumbai and Pune, and over the next few years scale up ASCENT to a much larger size pan-India. The interaction in the Trust Groups has been designed to provide value to entrepreneurs , using the power of learning in a Group , specifically through the following: · Facilitation – ASCENT will provide experts who will play a value adding role as Initiators and Trainers for the Group in its first...

Deepak Srinath of Viedea has an interesting post on the subject: ...the trend that has left me partly amused and partly concerned is the rapidly growing breed of entrepreneurs who are in the “business of mentoring and incubation”. I have interacted with many such “mentors” over the last few months and barring a few exceptions most have left me with the feeling that they do not have adequate experience or skills to mentor a startup. Some of them are barely out of college themselves and many of them claim to be serial entrepreneur s (on closer inspection, it’s more like ‘serial company starters’, none of which have managed to last beyond a year). It’s extremely worrisome that young entrepreneurs with smart ideas could be signing up such mentors, giving them equity and wasting a lot of time in the bargain. A good mentor is a critical part of an entrepreneur’s journey. A few tips for entrepreneurs from my own experience – ... 2. You may need multiple mentors on your entrepreneurial j...