Launch of the New Season of The Next Big Idea Announced by NSRCEL

The launch of the 2012 session of the Next Big Idea was announced yesterday by the Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL). The Next Big Idea is an integrated entrepreneur training and business plan competition.It is sponsored by the National Science & Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (NSTEDB) under the aegis of the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India and Intel.

The aim of the Next Big Idea session is to encourage innovation and create a structured business plan process for leading academic institutions across the country. The dream is to see these innovative ideas turn into real businesses. The programme is also a platform for any individual or team to showcase their ideas and seek mentoring, access to incubation and angel funds.

The Next Big Idea’s other objective is to ensure that academic institutions are better equipped to conduct business plan competitions and improve the quality of business ideas originating from these competitions. NSRCEL offers financial support to such competitions and even conducts a two day fully paid conference at IIM Bangalore to enable sharing of information and training on best practices to conduct competitions.

Speaking about the objective of the Next Big Idea, Professor K Kumar, Chairman, NSRCEL said, “The Next Big Idea seeks to provide a perfect opportunity for entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas and have their attractiveness and viability evaluated by experts in an extremely competitive setting.”

The Next Big Idea now invites entries from winners of B-Plan competitions across India during the year 1st April, 2011 to 31st March, 2012 to register and send their executive summaries at www.nextbigidea.in. The last date for receiving entries is March 31, 2012.

The incentives for the participating teams include a chance to be incubated and raise seed fund up to Rs 50 Lakh from NSRCEL, three days of fully-paid workshop at IIM-Bangalore with intensive mentoring and an opportunity to interact with VCs.

There are 10 cash prizes in the range of Rs 25,000 to Rs 1, 50,000 and a sponsorship to participate in University of California, Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge for the two best teams.

For more information on the Next Big Idea, visit http://nextbigidea.in/