The journey of entrepreneurship in India reaches a milestone today. Nine men have so far exhibited enough ‘E’ quotient to win the Indian edition of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of The Year award. The 10th takes his bow today.
It has been 10 years since Ernst &Young started tracking corporate India’s spirit of entrepreneurship and appetite for risk without which business success would be elusive through the Entrepreneur of the Year Award programme. If this E-factor was a key ingredient for success when the economy was booming, it has become sine qua non in the current turbulent economic environment.
Being E-positive is just the first criterion for starting a business. It must be accompanied by a vision, an idea where none existed. It must be buttressed by leadership skills, and sustained. The entrepreneurial push must be applied multiple times as the business passes through peaks and troughs.
A good entrepreneur must also be relevant to the larger community. These are the four qualities – vision, leadership, achievement and social responsibility – on which those vying for the Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 award have been judged.
The jury was headed by ICICI Bank Managing Director and CEO K V Kamath and had five other members: HT Media Chairperson Shobhana Bhartia, Temasek Holdings Senior Managing Director and Country Head Manish Kejriwal, Microsoft Corporation’s Chairman Ravi Venkatesan, Ashok Leyland Managing Director R Seshasayee, and Confederation of Indian Industry’s Chief Mentor Tarun Das.
From the pool of those who exhibited these qualities, a short-list of 19 possible Entrepreneurs of the Year 2008 has been drawn up by the jury from segments as diverse as infrastructure, banking, education, energy, media and retail. These “finalists” have been selected from 291 nominations received this year, which is the highest since the awards began in 1999.
“While the finalists came form diverse sectors, they were united in their desire to achieve beyond the ordinary. Each one of them has made discernable contributions to the economy by creating value and opportunity at large,” says Jury Chair Kamath.
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The finalists include Larsen &Toubro’s A M Naik, Vedanta’s Anil Agarwal, Avantha Group’s Gautam Thapar, Videocon’s Venugopal Dhoot, PRS Oberoi of Oberoi Group, and UTV’s Ronnie Screwvala.
“For many of them, their achievements go beyond running a profitable business to also impacting society at large and thereby creating more inclusive growth for India,” says Rajiv Memani, Ernst & Young’s country managing partner.
The award for the daring adventure that is entrepreneurship will be announced and given by the chief guest – Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee -- on November 26 in Mumbai. As in the earlier years, the winner of the 2008 award will compete for the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the year Awards in Monte Carlo, whose next edition is in May 2009.
The only Indian to bag the world title so far is Infosys’ N R Narayana Murthy, who won the Entrepreneur of the Year award in India in 2002 and the World Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2003.
Murthy, who comes from a family of teachers, believes that entrepreneurs are not born to the task, but made, and they are desperately needed to solve India’s chronic problem of poverty. “Entrepreneurs have a very important role in making this country a better place.
Entrepreneurship is perhaps the most powerful tool we have to solve the problem of poverty in India,” says Murthy, whose role model for “leadership by example” is Mahatma Gandhi.
Global award winners include Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, Dell’s Michael Dell and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz.
Those who have bagged the India award in the earlier years include stalwarts like Satyam’s Ramalinga Raju, Bharti’s Sunil Bharti Mittal, Zee Telefilms’ Subhash Chandra, Reliance Petroleum’s Mukesh Ambani, Tata Group’s Ratan Tata, Kumar Mangalam Birla of the Aditya Birla Group, Suzlon’s Tulsi Tanti and Hero Group’s Brijmohan Lall Munjal.
| AWARD WINNERS SO FAR | |
| 2007 | B. Ramalinga Raju |
| 2006 | Tulsi Tanti |
| 2005 | Kumar Mangalam Birla |
| 2004 | Sunil Bharti Mittal |
| 2003 | Ratan Tata |
| 2002 | N.R. Narayana Murthy |
| 2001 | Brijmohan Lall Munjal |
| 2000 | Mukesh Ambani |
| 1999 | Subhash Chandra |
The nine winners of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award that India has thrown up so far have nearly $115 billion in sales among them – which is a significant chunk of the country’s $1.2 trillion economy. These nine men – there is no woman on the list until now – may be separated by birth, by background, by age, by qualifications, and even by looks.
“There is however one common strand running through each of them. They are creators. Each one of them has created a business entity that is the pride of India,” according to the just-released book celebrating 10 years of the Entrepreneur of the Year award programme in India. And soon enough, the 10th creator will be announced.