Aiming for 'Silicon Valley' in India

A Stanford Univ programme in August will discuss feasibility options for India's own tech hub, writes Shalini Narang.

The theme of Stanford University's Asia Technology Initiative India Program 2005 Conference, to be held in August, is 'The Idea of Silicon Valley in India: Feasibility, Lessons and Trends'. The objective of the meet is to analyse the key components of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and their applicability in an Indian context from the perspective of related opportunities, barriers and experiences.

The tracks to be covered in the meet include Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs: Insights, Advice, and Parallels covering the thought processes of these two groups in Silicon Valley and in India and promoting discussion between the two camps on the implementation of a Silicon Valley culture in specific Indian cities. The topic on Lessons from Practitioners is to promote a dialogue between executives on specific successes and trends.

In line with the growing global face of the businesses of the day, Stanford's Asia Technology Initiative is an adequately timed academic-cum-entrepreneurship programme via which selected students of Stanford are sent to Shanghai, Tokyo, Bangalore, Mumbai and Hong Kong to gain real work life experiences at these destinations. From this year, Singapore has also been added as a programme destination.

The five-year-old programme of the premier university aims to promote entrepreneurship via hands-on entrepreneurial experience and by promoting link ups between Stanford and technology clusters in Asia.

Each summer for ten weeks, the students get to experience and explore the synergy between technology, industry and entrepreneurship in the Asian context.

"This year four Stanford students with a broad set of backgrounds have been chosen from amongst 50 to 60 applicants to intern in the high tech companies in India as a part of the ATI programme," says Chris Chan, the ATI India site director. "This is an extremely competitive fellowship," he adds.

The selected students currently interning in India include Alok Deshpande, Kimberly Lai, Divya Nettimi, and Neal Vora. Their host companies are Nicolas Piramal, Wockhardt Ltd, ICICI Bank and at Airtel respectively.

"The selection criterion for ATI fellowship is a passion for entrepreneurship in Asia, leadership experience, real world work background and/or academic excellence. Any of the Stanford students can apply including undergraduates, doctorates, business school graduates, law school graduates or any others," says Chris Chan.

"After selecting the fellows, we look for the best match between a fellow's interest and/or experience and the requirements of the firm. The fellows are put in touch with their host company and the fellows take on the responsibility of arranging a project with their mentors." Says Samvit Kanoria, the Executive Director for the entire ATI programme.

"ATI host companies range from large to small, but we strive to ensure that all the fellows get the best entrepreneurship education experience." Adds Chris.

Besides the ones in which this year's fellows are participating, some of the other host companies in India include Wipro, Biocon, Avesthagen, Development Credit Bank, Reliance, NetScaler, e4e, Wokhardt, Wipro and others.

The key supporters of ATI's India initiative include Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji and Prof. John Bravman, Vice Provost of Stanford. All of them have participated in the conferences and social networking meets in the past year events. The Bangalore programme started in 2001 and last year India's financial capital was added as the second ATI India programme destination. This year's sponsors include Artiman Ventures, Bersoft and Tata Consultancy Services.

The students interacting and working with local companies also become conduits for a cross-cultural exchange via transfer of the Silicon Valley culture to their companies via core project work while in turn learning about business trends in their locales.

Annual entrepreneurship conferences are held at the sites at the end of the ten weeks of stay to provide a forum for students, entrepreneurs, industrialists, academicians, venture capitalists, and government officials with similar interests to interact and promote the sharing of intellectual and business resources.

At the end of their summer experience the fellows also make a presentation to the host company with the results of their research including recommendations for change and improvement.