TiEcon India 2005 – ‘Unleashing Entrepreneurship‘

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) is organizing its annual conference in New Delhi called TiEcon India 2005 from 14-16 December. The theme for the conference is ‘Entrepreneurship Unleashed’ and it is billed as the biggest entrepreneurship conference in Asia.

It’s a three-day event with the first day dedicated to the investor community. Some short listed companies can showcase their business plans to VCs and equity investors and talk directly to them for funding. The next two days’ program features the conventional seminar type conferences. This is the agenda for the conference & this is the list of speakers.

Besides the main conference, on the sidelines, are mentoring clinics, assisted introductions and meetings, interest specific networking corners and sessions, not to forget cocktails and dinners.

TiE is steadily gaining in membership and influence. It started out of Silicon Valley as an agglomeration of ‘desi’ entrepreneurs and now it spawns a family of 42 chapters across 9 countries. India itself has 13 chapters. TiE claims that it is the largest network of entrepreneurs across the world.

In India, I can see the influence of TiE growing. It is slowly getting into the role of an organization for small and medium scale companies. There are many other industry associations but none of them focus specifically on SMEs, the way TiE does. NASSCOM is the godfather for IT/BPO/ITES companies; industry bodies like FICCI, ASSOCHAM, CII have been around for ages but the big industrial/corporate groups typically dominate them.

Also, if you go through the list of speakers at this year’s conference, you would notice that compared to last year, greater number of speakers will be from the conventional, old economy companies. This indicates that TiE is now reaching out beyond the boundaries of the IT/BPO/Software/Hi-Tech segments into the old economy segments of retail, manufacturing etc.

Last year, a separate session was earmarked for a few heavyweight politicians to make a pitch to entrepreneurs to come and set up SMEs in their respective states. It is slated for this year as well and indicates the growing clout of TiE amongst the political class, who realize that SME investments are far less demanding on basic infrastructural needs than bigger projects.

I am looking forward to TiEcon 2005 as well. Will keep you posted on the conference…