Reliance Venture Asset Management strikes exclusive India alliance with Stanford Business Competition

Mumbai, April 15, 2010: Reliance Venture Asset Management Ltd, India’s first and largest corporate venture capital firm and an arm of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, today announced its partnership with Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES), one of the largest and most prestigious student entrepreneurship organizations in the United States and institutionalized under the aegis of Stanford University. The aim of this partnership is to strengthen the entrepreneurship collaboration between India and Stanford University, in line with Late Mr Dhirubhai Ambani’s vision of seeing a thousand Dhirbubhai’s emerge from India.

As part of the partnership, Reliance Venture Asset Management is the only Indian venture capital firm to associate with BASES for ‘e-challenge’, its business plan competition and will play a pivotal role as a jury member to decide its winners. The company will also participate in one of BASES’ flagship programs titled e-Bootcamp; a 3 day intensive entrepreneurship workshop.

Commenting on the association, Mr. Harshal J. Shah, Chief Executive Officer & Board Member, Reliance Venture Asset Management Ltd said, “As a company philosophy, we have believed in being patrons of initiatives aimed at promoting collaborative Indo-US investments. Our recent association with MIT $100k entrepreneurship competition and now with Stanford BASES is a testament to this approach. Over the years, we have witnessed some exemplary ideas emerge from the student community at Stanford as a result of the Stanford BASES platform and are excited to partner Stanford to discover the next generation of budding entrepreneurs. We look forward to nurturing this talent through our ‘summer incubation program’ in India.”

Alvin Tse, Co-President, Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) said, “We are very happy to associate with Reliance Venture Asset Management as our sole India partner and are confident that our participants will receive the requisite handholding from their team to explore entrepreneurial prospects in the Indian market.”

Founded in 1996 by five Stanford University engineering students, Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students (BASES) is a non-profit and student run organization. It currently consists of 5000 active members and a strong alumni group which includes renowned global venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who have built several multi-billion dollar companies including Google, Amazon, Apple, Hewlett Packard, Cisco and several others.

Stanford BASES has helped create a number of innovative and successful companies over the last few years, such as LightBit [acquired by Arasor], Ingenuity, Gigabeat, Pandao, Penguin Computing, T-RAM, Scalable Life, Xagros, Epitrope, and Voltage Security (formerly IdentiCrypt).

About Reliance Venture Asset Management Ltd

Reliance Venture Asset Management Ltd is the corporate venture capital arm of the Reliance ADA Group. Since its inception in early 2006, the company has advised and / or invested in deals to the tune of over $4 billion. Stage, geographic and sector agnostic in its investment philosophy, Reliance Venture Asset Management has a global portfolio to its credit and has invested in promising companies such as India's largest online travel portal, Yatra.com, Suvidhaa Infoserve, Stoke Inc, Reverse Logistics Co, Tessolve Services, Pelago Inc, Sequans Communications, E-Band Communications, Seedfund and two MIT-startups, Dhama Innovations and Scalable Display Technologies. Some of the transactions they had advised the Reliance ADA Group on include the $300 million all-cash acquisition of San Francisco-based, Yipes Inc. by Reliance Communications, $82 million acquisition of UK-based, Vanco plc, and eWaveWorld, a $500 million initiative to bring 3G and 4G to 50 countries around the world by 2012. Headed by Mr. Harshal J. Shah, an MBA alumnus of Wharton School of Business, a Truman Gray Scholar with dual degrees from MIT, and an Andover Scholar from Phillips Academy in Andover, USA, the company comprises of professionals who bring over 50 years of cumulative experience and a solid academic base (MBAs - Ivy League, Technologists from premier Indian & International Universities & Chartered Accountants). The company was recently ranked 30th in the Red Herring Top 100 Global Venture Capital Firms in 2009 and was the only India based corporate VC company to feature in the ranking. For more information, kindly contact: www.relianceventure.com

About Stanford BASES

Stanford BASES is one of the largest student entrepreneurship organizations in the United States. This non-profit, student-run organization was founded in 1996 by a group of five Stanford University engineering students. They looked to gain top-level business advice and experience from industry leaders in the high-tech world, including high-profile CEOs, engineers, and prominent venture capitalists. Chartered with cultivating the next generation of entrepreneurs, these students received valuable insight as they developed their own business ventures and entered the working world. Today, Stanford BASES has evolved to include undergraduate and graduate students along with faculty members from all schools at Stanford, including Business, Engineering, Law, Medicine, Humanities and Science. Stanford BASES strives to help strengthen entrepreneurship collaboration at Stanford by working with a variety of student groups across campus. For more information, kindly contact: http://bases.stanford.edu