Overview

The nonprofit National Entrepreneurship Network was established in 2003 with a mission to create and support high-growth entrepreneurs, driving job-creation and economic growth in India.

NEN represents India’s largest and most dynamic community of new and future high-growth entrepreneurs, with over 70,000 members in 30 cities. It provides critical support to start-ups and early-stage entrepreneurs through high-impact entrepreneurship education; access to mentors and experts; fast-track access to incubation and funding; and learning tools and materials. It partners with over 470 top-tier academic institutes in India to help them develop vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystems on campus, which develop and support new and future entrepreneurs. In addition, it runs Entrepreneurship Week India, the country’s largest entrepreneurship-awareness campaign. In 2009, E Week India featured over 3500 events with more than 350,000 participants.

NEN was co-founded by IIT Bombay; IIM Ahmedabad; BITS, Pilani; SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai; Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore.

It is primarily supported by the Wadhwani Foundation, a philanthropic initiative of Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, Chairman of the Symphony Technology Group, and has offices in Bangalore and Mumbai.

Approach

NEN’s model for advancing entrepreneurship rests firmly on its partnership approach, making it both scalable and effective. Rather than deliver support directly, NEN partners with academic institutes to help them build an effective and a vibrant entrepreneurship ecosystem on campus to develop and support entrepreneurs. Institutes that NEN partners with are those that are already motivated to provide entrepreneurship programmes to their students, and appreciate the investment NEN makes to enhance their ability to do so.

In addition, NEN uses a group-purchasing model to aggregate support for institutes, members and entrepreneurs. Support includes a bank of volunteers for speaking and mentoring opportunities; corporations eager to support innovation; fast-track access to funding and incubation; learning tools and materials.

Impact

Since NEN started in 2003, it has accomplished the following:

	326 entrepreneurs launched and supported
	3000 future entrepreneurs created
	Membership growth:

2,50,000 registered members on nenonline.org, forming India’s largest and most vibrant entrepreneurial community online

Download: NEN Profile