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‘Tata First Dot powered by NEN‘, the student startup mentoring and showcase platform that debuted last January, concluded its 2011-2012 run last evening. The top five student ventures for the year, chosen from 30 shortlisted startups following a nationwide contest, were announced at an awards function in Chennai.

Over 600 students attended the two-day conference which was held at SSN College of Engineering. The 30 shortlisted ventures will be provided mentorship via the NEN mentoring platform for one year and will be given an opportunity to network with entrepreneurs, angel investors, mentors, experts and fellow student startups.

Meet the five winners:

Novo Informatics | Life Sciences

Delhi-based Novo Informatics is a life sciences research and development company, which works out of the IIT Delhi campus. The company was founded in April 2011. IIT Delhi chemical engineering student Madhup Benawat, a native of Jaipur, is a co-founder of the company with Sahil Kapoor, a genomics expert who has earlier worked at pharmaceuticals companies such as Dr Reddy’s and Ranbaxy. Director and co-founder B Jayaram is the company’s faculty facilitator at IIT Delhi. Others on the leadership team include Shashank Shekhar and Avinash Mehra.

The company is engaged in genome-related research to expedite healthcare by identifying the problem at the source. It has already executed projects in the US and the UK and has a pipeline of interesting projects. The startup also specializes in data mining with qualitative results with its targeted workforce. It claims revenues at between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 10 lakh and has 10 customers. The initial seed capital came from the founders and the company hopes to raise institutional funding to take their products to commercial scale.

Melting Point | Retail

Chennai-based Melting Point, founded in October 2011, is a cafe franchise of Aavin Parlour and operates on-campus at Rajalakshmi Engineering College. The venture was started by Sriram Jeyakumar and four other students.  The company aims to provide healthy alternatives in food and drinks to students at competitive rates. Despite on-campus competition from branded coffee chains, this startup proved successful without interfering with the team’s academic life. The team of five students claims cumulative revenues of between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 3 lakh and over 50 customers. The company has been funded by the founding team, which manages all aspects of running the café including accounting, marketing and sales. Read more about them at the Tata NEN First Dot website.

Breson | Cleantech

Founded by Bhupesh Sharma, a student of Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, in March 2010, this startup promotes clean energy. Based in Mumbai, it manufactures vertical wind and axel mills for 500, 800 and 1000 watts power generation. These windmills can be adjusted for different wind speeds to make them suitable across various terrains.  The windmills are low cost, effective and mostly immune to wind direction. Breson is also developing cost-efficient prototypes with bigger companies like Voltas, Samsung and Bharat Bijlee.

A team of two run this startup and it claims revenues at between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 3 lakh. Breson addresses the need for clean technology and can be scaled up for rural electricity programs. Initial funded by the founders, the startup is looking for institutional funding to scale up and build a better product portfolio. Read more about them at the Tata NEN First Dot website.

AJS Services | Infrastructure Services

Chennai-based AJS Services is a relatively older startup, founded in 2008 by Sanjay AJ, a student of Velammal Engineering College. It rounds up part-time, unskilled laborers into a uniform group and provides a gamut of services such as landscaping, decorating, painting and electrical fittings for big real estate projects. The company employs 50 people on any given day and its complete workforce consists of over 350 people, all part-time and skilled to do different odd jobs. It claims cumulative revenues over Rs 10 lakh a base of about 20 customers. The startup is looking to raised institutional funding to supplement volume work with big contractors. Read more about them at the Tata NEN First Dot website.

Phodphad! | Education

Phodphad is a Pilani-based education-oriented networking site that aims to make academics a more rounded experience. Founded in May 2010 by Nikhil Daga, a student of BITS PIlani, and run by a team of six students, it aims to bring the experience of a university online, with discussions, events, hubs, internships and departments with clubs. The challenges including being a student and running Phodphad in parallel. Though this startup competes with other online educational resources, it still has an advantage due its delivery methods. It claims cumulative revenues of Rs 10,000 so far.

Editor’s Note: All information in the above post has been sourced from NEN

What do entrepreneurs really need to succeed?

Passion. Drive. A  good idea. A network. Passion. Funding. Passion. Customers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But what about power? And I’m not speaking metaphysically here. I’m talking the real thing: electricity running through wires to reach a lab, an office, or a factory, with consistency and predictability. Power.

Journalists occasionally ask me what the government can or should do to improve the conditions for entrepreneurs in India. And every time I answer, I feel that I am somehow disappointing them.  “Changing the laws to encourage angel funding?” some prompt hopefully.  “Sure,” I respond. After all, some entrepreneurs need angel funding.

But generally I focus on the basics: power, roads and water would be a good place for the government to start. All entrepreneurs need power. Not all entrepreneurs need venture capital.

And the cost of building what they should be able to purchase disproportionately affects the new entrepreneur. It doesn’t hurt Infosys too much, these days, to run their own buses, generators, water purifiers and university. In fact, for them it’s an advantage to have these resources, when new entrepreneurs do not.

But it does hurt a new entrepreneur to shell out 2.5 lakhs (~ $5300) on a 25KVA diesel generator. Or 1.16 lakhs for 10 tubular batteries plus a UPS, like we did (~ $2500). Let me put this in context: the cost of backup power equals anywhere from 4 months to 8 months of salary for a junior programmer. That’s a lifetime in a startup. Do you think Silicon Valley startups are trading manpower for lights?

Ok, full disclosure: I’m writing this in the middle of a power shortage. Bangalore is badly crunched right now, though certainly not as badly as some.

To preserve our batteries, we don’t use the printers, and we unplug all the laptops.  There are no AC’s, fridge, or water (when we forget to turn on the pump during the moments with power). The only good thing is that no power means no power point presentations.

And we’re the lucky ones. I was talking to a young entrepreneur from Hubli the other day. His company serves clients in the manufacturing sector of northern Karnataka. His clients suffer power cuts (euphemistically called “load-shedding”) for over 8 hours per day. How do they manage? Some drive their teams to perform 8 hours of work in 4 hours. They have no choice. But is this the way to achieve 6 – 8 % GDP growth?

Building the entrepreneurial ecosystem means investing in the basics, and perhaps the entrepreneurial community should help highlight this priority.

Don’t even get me started on the roads.

About the columnist: Laura Parkin is co-founder and CEO of the National Entrepreneurship Network, promoted by the Wadhwani Foundation. Prior to NEN, Parkin worked with the Ashoka Foundation, did a stint as a venture capitalist and started four companies. She is Harvard University alumni and currently lives in Bangalore. Visit her blog at Venture Out.

This post has been re-produced at Startupcentral with prior permission from Laura Parkin.

Image Courtesy: NEN

Last Saturday, Mint put out a half page interview with Laura A Parkin, executive director, National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) and Wadhwani Foundation, clarifying some of the issues/controversies around the Tata NEN Hottest Startups 2008 nominations — read Tata NEN Campaign Addresses Early Hiccups. Mint is a media partner for the startup ranking contest. As on September 20th the contest had received 350 nominations. Parkin, who is currently also an advisor for Acumen Fund’s water portfolio, sent me detailed responses to questions that I had raised separately on the contest. Edited excerpts from the email interview:

One of the key objectives of the awards, as you state, is to engage the public, which would be beneficial to the startup eco-system in the longer term. Voting, therefore, is public. Why did you consider ‘nomination by public’ also necessary? Since startups would ultimately self-nominate via the verification check, wouldn’t self nomination in the first place have helped avoid all the confusion and miscommunication that has arisen?

Why have the public nominate? Two reasons, both boiling down to increasing inclusiveness. One, we are trying to include people in the identification and appreciation of startups. Voting is one way to engage, but nomination is another. Our intent is to get people thinking about their own regions, their own cities, fellow alumni from institutes. Has someone they know started a great company? In a sense, this can provide a deeper connection with startups, than voting. Two, we have limited resources to get the word out. We’re a non-profit, so no marketing budget! Yet we feel it is important to reach smaller cities as well as reach startups in larger metros. Therefore we are working with different groups: associations, chambers of commerce, NEN student e-cells, to reach out across sectors and areas. And we feel that if, for example, a local industry association or other group identifies and introduces some nominees then we should recognize them as ‘nominators’.

In addition, an interesting angle has emerged, one which we had not anticipated. Some of the entrepreneurs have actually been reluctant to self-nominate. They explained that they would be more comfortable if someone else nominated them and then they would work with us to complete the form. We think that this has to do with the fact that being nominated means someone has noticed you, thinks you are doing well and wants you to be part of the contest. Regarding the potential for miscommunication in this approach, we are happy that there has been only one such incident, where we wrongly attributed nomination. Generally this approach has been working well to broaden participation. In the case where there was miscommunication, as soon as it was brought to our attention, we apologized, corrected that mistake and then changed our system of crediting nominators so that it would not happen again.

The two startups who wanted to ‘withdraw’ their nominations had, in fact, initially agreed to be nominated. Why didn’t NEN build in a clause in the nomination process to stipulate that once startups agreed to be nominated they could not withdraw barring  clear and valid reasons related to business sensitivities — for instance, the startups may be closing a fundraising deal or may be in the process of being acquired? This would have left no room for problems later though the number of nominations may have come down.

We understand that this is the first time awards have been run in this open platform. So if people have a change of heart, it’s ok. It is not in NEN’s character to make anyone do anything against their will. We think that entrepreneurship is about aligning incentives. So we would rather work to ensure that every nominee gains value from the experience and participates — not just this year, but in the future. To that end, we will be talking to as many nominees as we can to understand how to improve the experience, increase their visibility and design some ongoing support for this group. We appreciate that people are investing time and energy to participate and want it to be worth their while.

The contest ranks startups on the basis of a public voting system coupled with an expert jury review. How does this process work exactly? How is the jury’s review/ranking reconciled with the number of votes?

Here’s the process for voting, reviews and rating, and ranking:

Voting – As soon as the nomination is online, it is open to voting. Anyone can vote once for every single nominee. Voting is both online and via SMS.

Expert Review and Rating

1. Once the nomination is complete and goes online, it is given to two experts to review and rate. One expert is a must be from the nominee’s industry and the other can be a generalist, perhaps a venture capitalist or angel investor with a knowledge of building companies. The list of experts is available on the NEN website.
2. Each expert returns a review and a rating. Rating is on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the best — see Expert Rating Guidelines.
3. If the two experts’ ratings for the nominee differ by 5 points or more, we send the nomination to a third expert. The final rating will be the average of the three. Otherwise, it would be the average of the chosen two.
4. If an expert rates a nominee 3 or below, we go back to the expert to see if they need more information on the startup before we use the rating.
5. Additionally, if we feel that the review is not in the ‘educational spirit’ of the contest, we reserve the right to send the nomination to a third expert and replace the review that we feel is inappropriate.
6. Experts are encouraged to mail us with any questions they might have for the entrepreneur, which we then forward.
7. Experts are asked to return the reviews within a week.

Ranking – How it works and is calculated

1. Ranking starts as soon as the nominee has the expert rating and voting is open. Ranking is dynamic and can change anytime.
2. Each nominee receives an ‘expert ranking’ based on their expert rating. For example, Company XYZ may have received an expert ranking of 9, which places them at number 2 spot for expert ratings.
3. Each nominee also receives a ranking based on the number of votes. For example, Company XYZ may have received 100 votes, which places them at number 4 for votes received.
4. For the overall ranking we weigh experts and votes equally and take the average of the two separate rankings. For example, if Company XYZ’s expert ranking is 2 and number 4 by votes, the company’s overall ranking is 3.

All of this information is available in more detail on the Hottest Startups website.

Why has NEN kept the reviewing experts for each nominee confidential?

We have listed the panel of over 200 judges so that participants can see on the whole who is providing the ratings and reviews. Keeping individual reviews confidential, we feel, allows experts to be more frank. This practice falls in line with most existing awards and contests where one learns the overall verdict of a panel of judges but not how each individual judge has decided.

One frequent complaint about the public voting system is that much of the voting takes place via spamming. To begin with, is it fair to rank a startup at all? Can mass emailing of vote requests really help the startup get the right kind of feedback?

Startups rank themselves all the time, benchmarking against competitors. Customers rank startups when they decide from whom to purchase a service or product. Investors rank startups when making an investment decision. And of course there are many startups out there ranking startups in myriad ways. So whether it is fair or not, startups are ranked all the time. However we feel that the feedback in most cases would be valuable in that it can be usefully incorporated to improve. Startups are constantly learning and evolving and feedback and input are keys to that process.

I am not aware of what kind of what kind of feedback the startups are receiving from their vote solicitation. But I have, of course, seen a few of the efforts on sites and blogs — and they have caused me to go online, check them out, learn about them…and cast a vote. So at the least, some of the efforts are spreading awareness of the companies.

A startup that looks very ordinary today could potentially be a game changer tomorrow. By letting the public vote on such startups doesn’t the startup risk being unfairly judged by people who perhaps don’t really understand or at best have a passing interest in its business model or potential?

Actually, here I must confess, I have been a serial entrepreneur and also spent a few years as a venture capitalist in the US, before launching a venture capital backed company. And even as a venture capitalist who was assessing startups as part of the job and watching my friends who remained in the venture capital business — it is hard. Taking a call on an early stage company is just difficult. I’m sure that venture capitalists will tell you: no 100 per cent success rate on investments. Of course, an assessment from a venture capitalist is usually very informed, but even so, it is not guaranteed to predict the future accurately. Getting many people to give a quick response to a company may, in fact, be rather like market research. And therefore valuable in a different way.

Here’s where we come to the inherently risky nature of giving awards to young companies rather than waiting to award companies after they have grown into large, successful organizations. I don’t think that any of us is saying that all these companies, even the winners, are guaranteed to succeed. In this case, we are all looking at whether the pieces and the opportunity, in our judgment, have lots of potential. I think most of us are aware that the path from startup to large company is fraught with challenges. These awards, and indeed the entire contest, are a celebration of the spirit shown by these entrepreneurs and their teams in taking the first steps on that path. And in that way, each and every nominee has already succeeded.

Photo Courtesy: NEN