McKinsey launches indiaventure2000.com

McKinsey is asking young entrepreneurs to come in with their ideas. Finally, 15-20 viable ideas will be filtered out over the next couple of months with possible venture capital (VC) funding, he said.

“Such initiatives are pertinent in the Indian context given the ground realities that exist. A typical Indian internet start-up, for instance, he said, starts off with an idea. The idea is funded with a mixture of personal savings and borrowings. On an average, five years down the line, professional funding, perhaps in the form of a VC steps in, he said.

As against this, in Silicon Valley, professionalism is inducted early on and within 18 months most projects evolve into full fledged business outfits, he said.

India Venture 2000 though will attempt to balance these distortions. After viable ideas have been isolated, participants are put through the paces by a team of coaches drawn from a pool of IT entrepreneurs, professionals and McKinsey consultants.

Chrysalis, ICICI Ventures, Infinity and Walden have expressed their willingness to pump in approximately $180 million into these plans. The advisory board has on its panel people like K V Kamath, managing director, ICICI, Rajesh Jain of IndiaWorld.com and N R Narayana Murthy, Chairman of Infosys. Educational institutes like the IITs and IIMs are being roped in to be part of the project.

Stanford University has over the years spawned powerhouses like Silicon Graphics, Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard and Sun Microsystems. In India, however, there are no such recorded instances, he pointed out. Hence, the move to solicit participation from educational institutes.