Top IITs, IIMs launch consortium to boost Indian entrepreneurship ecosystem

A consortium of five premier management and engineering institutes has been set up to boost the Indian entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Called ‘Innovation-Venturing and Entrepreneurship in India Network (iVEIN)', its founding members are faculty at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, IIT Bombay, Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore, IIM Calcutta and IIM Kozhikode.

This is the first such joint initiative in India by the IITs and IIMs to promote startups.

This network of institutions will leverage strengths of its partners and would work with other stakeholders such as incubators, government and investors to generate and disseminate knowledge.

A Thillai Rajan, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, said the iVEIN network will facilitate high-quality research in this field among the academic fraternity in India and create avenues for dissemination of relevant knowledge through conferences and journal publications.

The network’s aim is to seed the creation of a society that will organise annual conferences, publish a journal, and architect a data repository in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship

“iVEIN aims at playing a larger, strategic role in the startup ecosystem beyond incubating startups. The network, backed by academic rigour of premier institutions, would help formulate knowledge in the fast-evolving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the country,” said Keyoor Purani, Professor IIM Kozhikode.

The immediate activity that would be taken up by iVEIN would be to publish the India Innovation, Venture and Entrepreneurship Report.

Vidyanand Jha, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at IIM Calcutta, said the network would aid in creation of data-based knowledge and dissemination of such knowledge.

The iVEIN network aims to create an interdisciplinary body of knowledge synthesizing multiple perspectives. This is aimed at meeting the requirements of policy makers, academic researchers, students, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and all those interested in innovation and ventures.

Institutes, organisations and individuals, investment managers, practitioners and entrepreneurs can be part of the network to facilitate and promote collaborative research.