E Week 2012 Partners

The Wadhwani Foundation was established in 2000 as a philanthropic Foundation by Dr. Romesh Wadhwani - the Silicon Valley, California based entrepreneur, with the conviction that improved standards of living of a nation's populace was directly tied to accelerating economic development.

Dr. Ajay Kela, as President and CEO, helps drive the Foundation as a distinctive and innovative next generation non-profit engaged in picking niche, high impact initiatives, and scaling them through effective Government and Industry partnerships to implement its mission.

Acting as a catalyst, the Foundation has demonstrated its ability to establish innovative models and make long term investments to achieve its goals.

The mission of the philanthropic foundation is to accelerate economic development in India and other emerging economies. This is done through large scale Job Creation and Skill Development by working across the higher education spectrum and leveraging Government resources and market forces to achieve scale.

By forging effective partnerships, bringing an entrepreneurial mindset, innovation and successful business models to the social sector, the goal is to generate very large scale, quality, sustainable jobs and livelihoods each year.

The non-profit National Entrepreneurship Network was established in 2003 with a mission to create and support high-growth entrepreneurs, driving job-creation and economic growth. Today, NEN represents the largest, most vibrant community of India's new and future entrepreneurs. Its membership comprises:

• More than 500 top-tier academic institutes across India,
• A motivated pool of over 1400 entrepreneurship faculty members,
• Over 400 student Entrepreneurship Cells that count more than 70,000 members, and
• Thousands of NEN Alumni launching NEN E Clubs

 

Leveraging the resources and programs of the NEN Trust, these members – the NEN institutes, faculty, ECells, and E Clubs – each year run thousands of programs that create and support entrepreneurs.

NEN was initiated by the Wadhwani Foundation, and co-founded by IIT Bombay; IIM Ahmedabad; BITS, Pilani; SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai; and the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology, Bangalore.