IBM announced a tie up with the National
Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) for a series of IBM-NEN Mentor Melas to provide
several hundred growing entrepreneurs in India the knowledge, support and
connections to achieve their greatest impact. This is the first community
initiative in a series that IBM will be engaging in as it gears to celebrate
its Centennial on June 16th.
To be held across six cities in the country – Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and NCR – the IBM-NEN Mentor
Melas will comprise 12 mentoring sessions, in which nearly 400 volunteer IBM
experts will mentor over 300 innovation-driven young entrepreneurs from a range
of sectors, helping them overcome critical challenges. Each IBM mentor will
have the opportunity to mentor 3 entrepreneurs, and each entrepreneur will have
the opportunity to tap into the expertise of 3 IBM mentors, through separate
1:1 sessions that are facilitated and run by NEN in the mentor’s city.
The series will commence with the Mentor
Mela at the Jyothi Nivas College, Bangalore. Each Mentor Mela session
will pair 30 NEN entrepreneurs with 3 different IBM experts. Every entrepreneur
will have 45 minutes, one-on-one, with each of the 3 mentors to discuss any
challenges that he/she is facing. The entrepreneur seeking advice will be
pre-matched to the mentors based on challenges in different functional areas
across finance, marketing, human resources, logistics, technology solutions
etc. Similarly, every IBM expert will also mentor 3 NEN entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurs are creative and ambitious
and with the right guidance can provide immense growth to an economy
as well as bring about a progressive change in thinking and culture,” said
Robin Willner, vice president, Global Community Initiatives IBM.
India is at a point where there are
infinite opportunities for the youth and we are delighted to partner with NEN
to foster the spirit of entrepreneurship here. At IBM we already have several
initiatives that support entrepreneurship and we are sure these Melas will
result in a creative exchange of ideas,” Willner added.
All the 30 IBM mentors present at each
Mentor Mela will be top professionals from the company. They will come from the
senior leadership and other senior management at IBM. Each expert will be a
sector/domain specialist in his/her respective field. The entrepreneurs seeking
advice will be from start-ups, or ventures in the early-growth stage or even
seasoned entrepreneurs facing growth challenges or those whose ventures are in
the prototype or pre-revenue stage. Basically, anyone who has a well researched
idea but is uncertain how to implement it is welcome to participate in this
Mela.
