National Entrepreneurship Network
It doesn’t take a lot to figure out that Entrepreneurship is my favorite subject and I have written numerous posts on the subject. There are a few institutions which has been pretty active in talking about it and organizing events around that. National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), backed by Wadhwani foundation, is one such institute that I have known for more than a year now and have also spoken in events organized by them.
Babit from NEN informed me a couple of weeks back about the re-design of the site that they had launched – which is essentially a very complete online resource for entrepreneurs in India. I have been refraining from writing about it for some time but the more I go through it, the more I think that this is an awesomely well done site and acts as a complete resource for the Indian entrepreneurs – particularly the first timers. Having spent more than a couple of years running Tekriti, I wish that this existed earlier for me to have easy access to certain things that I learnt the hard way.
All in all – highly recommended for all entrepreneurs in India to bookmark this. They have articles / answers from VCs, have a weekly coverage on various startups and tons of articles / presentations on various things that a first time entrepreneur wants access to.
What I see missing is a link to their RSS feed that I could just subscribe in my blog aggregator that doesn’t force me to go to their website all the time to read the contents.
Interesting post, Ashish. I really enjoy your style. BTW, I run a big Article Directory and if you have some articles for distribution, you are very welcome to post them.
All the best,
Alex
http://www.wowarticlesonline.com/Category/Entrepreneurship/247
Nice post…Actually came across your blog while browsing for something on entrepeneurs…Happened to read through other of your articles, seemed nice…Also the one on book reviews was good…
That just reminded me…recently in Mumbai there is an online library launched by some entrepeneurs..They deliver the books at your doorstep..and pick them once you are done ….Their website is http://www.librarywala.com...
Thought in case you were covering entrepeneurs, you could talk about them to all the book lovers. They were recently covered by Mid day in their Sunday issue.
hi ashish,
In this world when people are much ,more attracted towards web, even i bought a domain name “http://www.yahoocollege.com” in february from smallbusiness.yahoo.com , it was working fine till august ,we invested our money and time in it’s promotion and other factors, In august yahoo people ,they transferred this domain name to themselves illegally, and when approached to their support team , they told their is violation of terms and condition, so they had to take this step.
domain was registered by me till 2011 ,now here big question is now domain name is redirection to yahoo site.
http://www.yahoocollege.com
however it’s cacched image and google results can be seen here.
http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=yahoocollege&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
1)are yahoo people authorized to take anybody’s domain without his concern if it is registered through them.
2)isn’t it violation of rule.
3)if there was some problem why was i not notified and today why is it redirectiong to yahoo site.
4) Is there any place where we can solve this dispute.
Since you being one of leading entrepreneurs of india i thought of sharing it with you. any input.
Why no new posts? Continue blogging…we really get to read some fantastic posts from you!
Along with TiE and Nasscom, NEN is another really great catalyst point for the Indian entrepreneur.
Thanks to companies like Tata, Wipro and Infosys – there has been a real change regarding the way the Indian entrepreneur is viewed at the professional level.
What the introduction NEN does is bring that startup component and the high-growth entrepreneur another catalyst so that India isn’t simply perceived as an outsourcing nation at the global level but a nation that is not only embracing but should be defining what it means to ahve 21st Century mindset.
Those leaders that can propel that mindset need to be propelled to the front and those leaders whose education is reflection, mirror or duplication of the industrial age British Raj mentality, need to learn to adapt or defer to those who have a bigger vision for India as a global force than they can ever have. That does not make India’s base problems go away, but unless we have leadership that raises the bar, then a large part of the wealth opportunity cannot flow back to creating a virtuous cycle of indian entrepreneurship – from village life to urban centers freed by the power of technology to create new urban villages, rather than industrial age cities.
For all the controversy there is what others think that Nehru did or did not do for India, he did set up the seed for the kind of education, motivation and adaptation to produce the kind of thinking that has now blossomed into producing the talent caliber that does take 50 years of social policy to harvest. 30 years ago the perception of Indians was as taxi-drivers but today it isn’t Hollywood that is driving perceptions, it is is Bollywood.
Grant it that I greatly dislike the Indian habit of copying the West and treating Hollywood as the benchmark for media, but the reality is that someone needs to get to Bollywood has to recognize that it is not just a film industry that can fuel dumbed down commercial product push but a central cog of soft power – the very soft power which is essential for those nations who are going to become the leaders of 21st Century life and can create the kind of entrepreneurial renaissance that makes dumbing down people into Coke drinkers and Nike wearers a classic error for those nations who wish to be leaders in a knowledge based age.
The flywheel of education is alive and turning and Modern India does not represent a politically correct definition of diversity that emanates from North America – India has a naturally inbuilt diversity thousands of years old and it is this diversity that should be be corner-stoned into the infrastructure that attracts the best talent from the around the world.
I don’t particularly like a state like Kerala to be so well educated and yet see its people migrating outwards because India did not have a greater sense of it’s self. Nor do I think the India character needs to be defined by the kind of extremism which emanates from nations struggling with questions of energy.
India is a nation which has over a quarter of the world’s supply of Thorium (a nuclear fissile material that is created for civilian and not military nuclear development) has all the resources it needs, as well as the brain power to be global leaders in renewable energy and bring this resource to the development of a 21st Century infrastructure.
India is a nation that should change the rules of social architecture, and it has done so in its rich history and due its diverse nature but it has the opportunity to learn from infrastructures that don’t work and in the quest for growth.
So fitting NEN in that picture may sound absurd or irrelevant, but NEN is one brick of proactive development in a series of foundations that are being constructed that will organize the cerebral infrastructure of India.
Then again, this is me, as usual, simply thinking out aloud in an age when quality thinking becomes the premium national asset, not simply educating bodies to keep refueling the industrial age.
M.
When I look back today at what I have written here over a year ago, I realized that it was not too my observation above. So I am going to take a different stab at what is I think is most important about entrepreneurial activity.
There is no substitute for “doing” entrepreneurship and Tekriti in the regard (as I have mentioned before) is an embodiment of this, I have seen its people engage on projects and they do great work and Amit Goyal as one of a highly conscientious team comes to mind.
I can relate to what Ashish says above, but one cannot assume a responsibility for a future one cannot control yet one can improve on habit, and entrepreneurship itself beyond the capacity to serve others is about the fostering of professional habit and most importantly specific values. Uncertainty is a form of faithlessness and a good book that outlines that is “Face Your Fear” by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.
What values the enterprise picks is going to shape the what and how of an organization. I write online because we are in era where we can no longer be passive passengers and where the most important engagement is the one which is centered on personal improvement rather than social change.
It is continuous improvement that must scale from inside an entrepreneurial space and work its way outward as a value chain and an environmental ripple. Social change theories mostly emanated from the 1960′s counter-culture, of which the student riots in Paris, France were a pivotal moment, as was the Vietnam War.
Today students in France are becoming activated again and their is another war which involves America, but this time this is a throwback to the 60′s – for what we live in is the 21st Century, yet what we continue to do is to think like we did 40 years ago and thus recreate a history which belonged back then.
Social media people talk about connecting people but they live in the past creating technologies for the future. There is a great difference between the entrepreneurial manager and the media manager, one seeks freedom, the other creates enslavement.
This weekend I went to see the movie “Om Shanti Om” at our local cinema. As a blockbuster it delivered, as an orgasmic celebration about Bollywood it was spectacular, and as for as a storyline, it tugged at values which we are all familiar with.
IMHO it is entrepreneurial values that require reincarnation, because until that happens, India will continue to be a nation that can do an incredibly brilliant job of demonstrating values, but still fail to show these values as better infrastructure; in better living conditions; in the creation of livable cities; in the creation of a water quality and delivery system which is reliable and serves the future; in the environment as an intelligent system; in traffic and human mobility which is well coordinated; and urban design which is fit for human beings rather than machines… All of this which becomes a statement that echoes that values are no longer simply a custom or mannerism, but are inculcated and deeply enmeshed into the fabric of modern India.
These things do not happen by becoming text reciting intellectuals, it can only happen when values seep into entrepreneurial activity that creates thinking in and for the act of intelligent creation itself.
This is not the responsibility of a few entrepreneurial giants but in the education and active involvement of millions of people, and that requires not simply better information sites like NEN, but fostering of an attitude which says that what I write is what I think and what I think is what will help me improve to do and what I do is to deliver value, to meet demand which itself is value-based.
Such a way does not happen in a passive environment where others read blogs, it happens when we personally choose to make it happen. Ashish has always been kind to allow me to think once and while think out aloud here, but many confuse thinking for writing. Writing is what writers do, thinking is what happens inside naturally our own minds.
What makes the 1960′s different from the 21st Century mind IMHO is that the 60′s was based on thought leadership but the 21st Century is based on thought execution – for this century is fit for those who are willing to think and improve both environment and their own values, not to those who are willing to imitate, copy or follow.
It is the job of media to make us into cheering and passive audiences, but it is the work of entrepreneurs and teachers and builders to create the future that makes us feel most alive today – therefore it is imperative to write to think rather than to write for media and this write to think has to have productive purpose and not simply to create more information.
There is a danger in such media proliferation in a highly connected age and this danger or warning was articulated well by Marshall McLuhan – and those who understand McLuhan recognize he wasn’t a prophet of the global village as some portray, but was a man who feared what the electric age would do to mankind. He feared the creation of an “idiocracy” (a title of a movie that Hollywood has since made) and that is why while Bollywood celebrates itself, the reincarnation of India’s spirit is entrepreneurial.
So entrepreneurship without thinking is what we must fear but the existence of people who know how to execute on their vision, to serve greater values and to push entrepreneurship into the human psyche to raise the bar on intelligence – that is the 21st Century promise.
Tekriti are on the leading edge of the new information age – this is what makes entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial management such a force today – and that is nothing knew – read Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker, so don’t ask me what I think for I do not wish to do this thinking for others in an age of information abundance (and I am vehemently opposed to those who will not examine life themselves, as much as Jiddu Krishnamurti was when he talked about what Freedom is and should be.
So what others do is their own concern, for my contribution here is only about my own personal discovery and not one more new book in a world full of books. I cannot discover, what I am not willing to think about and this space here at Ashish’s blog has been utilized by me for this purpose.
M.
I found this while surfing for travel websites. Thanks for sharing NEN link. Visit http://www.ghumakkar.com in your spare time where me and some of my friends are trying to build a travelers community.
Thanks
Hi ,
Read ur ( and Gaurav’s blog ) quite often. A bold and enterprisin move by u guys .
And I like this regular blog stuff. Very creatively written too .
Abt me … I work at ur ex-company now
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