Ramakrishna Kalluri, Vice President - NEN Ecosystem, Wadhwani Foundation is excited at the prospect of Indore and Bhopal as thriving entrepreneurial hubs. "It gives me great pleasure that the Wadhwani Foundation's flagship initiative, National Entrepreneurship Network, is now expanding its network and capacity building model to Indore and Bhopal.

"We see tremendous energy, enthusiasm and innovation in the younger population in this region. We are confident that by enhancing the networking and learning opportunities between startups, mentors, investors, angels, ecosystem partners and academia, we will greatly enhance the entrepreneurial growth opportunities in this region", he says.

Awareness on entrepreneurship among students and youngsters in Tier-2 cities like Indore and Bhopal has gone up significantly in the last few years. Lot of youngsters are taking entrepreneurship as their preferred career choice and starting new ventures. However, important stakeholders who act as support systems to these aspiring entrepreneurs are still evolving and far from maturity. There is a need to develop and nurture mentors, angel investors, faculty, corporates, media so that they play much more active and constructive role in contributing to the ecosystem.

A key element of the startup ecosystem in any geography is high-quality mentors who are a scarce resource. NEN is making special efforts to bring on-board city-based mentors to add to its existing global mentor base of 400+. The entrepreneur and mentor engagement efforts are geared towards assisting entrepreneurs to get the best of help possible within the ecosystem by building sustainable and scalable online and offline networks.

Short to medium impact of this NEN initiative will be in the form of increased startup successes, accepting entrepreneurship as a viable career option and better networking and coordination among various stakeholders for efficient value delivery to entrepreneurs in terms of capital, know-how and innovation.

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