IIM-A, NID & MICA join hands

In a unique partnership, students from the three premier institutes of Ahmedabad - Indian Institute of Management, National Institute of Design and Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad - have got together to put their core skills in creating business plans for start-up ventures.

The collaboration, which currently revolves around the students of one institute taking up elective courses in the other institutes, has led to students from NID taking up the business design aspect, students of Mica taking up the communications management, while their counterparts from IIM-A shaping the financial side of the business plan.

With a number of top venture capitalists and angel investors visiting the IIM-A campus as part of the institute's Annual Venture Conclave 2007, the students are leaving no stone unturned to create a business plan that would catch the investors' attention.

A number of students from the Post-Graduate Programme in Management for Executives (PGPX) at IIM-A have elected to study Design for Competitive Advantage at NID and Advertising and Communications management for a semester at Mica.

"The students of NID and Mica lend their expertise in areas, which we are not completely exposed to. Their inputs make the business plan more professional and a better proposition for the interested venture capitalist or angel investors," said Manoj Kurukkal, a PGPX student who plans to launch his venture in the speciality retail chain segment in seafood.

Last year, six students from the institute had opted out of final placements to start their own ventures.

This year, 12 teams presented their plans to a panel of investors with start-up ideas that included specialised websites, web portals, a jatropha-biofuel dealing company, organic food and other niche business segments.

A group of six participants from the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT), Gandhinagar, presented their plan to create 'Tempo Stand', a multi-functional music portal, which had earlier won them the top prize in an event at IIT Bombay.

With the seed amount ranging from Rs 30 lakh to around Rs 1.5 crore, the students are also looking at public sector banks for funding. Interestingly, as part of the PGPX course, students had an option of creating a business plan between September 2006 and February 2007 under the heading Individual Research Project (IRP). Around 20 students are set to present the projects at the campus this week.

Also, with these students having considerably more experience, compared with the Post Graduate Students (PGP), venture capitalists and angel investors have shown interest in a number of projects.