Nasscom 2000 concludes in Mumbai, plans entrepreneurs club

MUMBAI: Nasscom has plans for setting up a Nasscom Entrepreneurs club that will be able to provide the right guidance for Indian entrepreneurs. This was stated here on Saturday, the concluding day of the four-day Nasscom 2000, by the Indian software industry association.

A would-be entrepreneur will have to go through a process to get the membership and when he becomes successful, he will have to give the club one per cent of his company’s sweat equity, Nasscom president Dewang Mehta said.

The club will have a panel of angel investors and venture capitalists, mentors — successful entrepreneurs — who will help upcoming ones at workshops to be held in different cities of India. ‘‘People require the first-cut information on how to start a company. The Nasscom club will help entrepreneurs network with angel investors and VCs,’’ Mr Mehta said.

He also told reporters that it had been able to bring together IT minister Pramod Mahajan and Congressman Kamal Nath at a late-night meeting on Friday and get them to agree on a lot of issues. Kamal Nath, Mr Mehta said, had assured cooperation with the BJP-led government on issues like bandwidth creation, the IT Bill etc. when they come up in Parliament. Nasscom has succeeded in doing the impossible — help strike a consensus between the Congress and the BJP on IT issues.

Nasscom will soon be telling the Maharashtra government what it should do for the IT sector with regard to infrastructure and policies. He said he had met Maharashtra chief minister Vilas Rao Deshmukh on Saturday morning and the two had decided that Nasscom would undertake a study to work out an IT action plan for Maharashtra within the next two months. Nasscom will also worry about how to develop the Marathawada and Vidharbha regions and about making Pune, Nasik and Nagpur IT cities.

Pramod Mahajan, Mr Mehta said, had assured Nasscom that the IT industry would get more incentives. But, Nasscom is only asking for simplification of procedures with respect to issues like mergers and acquisitions etc and the adoption of the K.B. Chandrashekar report.

Mr Mehta said Nasscom would spend the next month trying to ensure that the government allows ISPs to have their own international gateways. After Mumbai, Nasscom-2000 will go to New York in September.

Four days of hectic schedule, 800 delegates at the ‘Creating wealth in the digital era’ conference, over one lakh visitors to the Nasscom-2000 exhibition and 7,000 participants at the dotcom conference, the e-summit, and over 1,000 business plans thrust into Nasscom’s hands — Dewang Mehta was on cloud nine.

One more initiative in the offing is an agency to rate IT companies. ‘‘Rating agencies that there are now understand the financial issues of a company. But there are none that understand the technology issues. We need an agency which understands IT dynamism,’’ Nasscom president added.

Mr Mehta is worried about non-IT companies posing as IT companies at the stock markets. He said Nasscom is doing its bit to bring such instances to the notice of authorities and investors. ‘‘But investors themselves will have to be careful,’’ he said. Nasscom will benchmark companies and provide understanding on them. When a Nasscom member-company decides to go in for an IPO, Nasscom will advertise about that company’s membership that will mean it has greater credibility than a non-member.