India grooms next gen high-tech entrepreneurs

Leading Indian universities and IT companies are working together to foster greater innovation and entrepreneurial skills among the country's engineering and technology graduates.

The head of India's number one IT company, TCS, said the talent coming out of the country's academic institutions is key to India becoming a bigger player in the global IT market and moving up the value chain from lower-level software development services.

S Ramadorai, CEO at TCS, speaking to silicon.com in Bangalore, said: "The talent is absolutely there. Research and development is the next paradigm for India."

One of the academic organisations encouraging students to be entrepreneurial is the Indian Institute of Science (IIS) in Bangalore, which was founded in 1909 by one of the Tata family and now has more than 2,000 PhD students studying for research degrees.

The Bangalore IIS already boasts TCS' Ramadorai and Infosys chairman NR Narayana Murthy among its alumni and a special unit called the Society for Innovation and Development (SID) aims to encourage the next generation of IT leaders by fostering close links between the students and industry.

Professor S Mohan, CEO of SID, said the aim is not just to prepare students for jobs at big multinational companies.

He said: "We want to see our students motivated to become entrepreneurs."

SID's entrepreneurship centre opened in 2003 and provides free consultancy advice from Ernst & Young for IIS students who form a start-up as well as giving them free office space and computers, internet access and telephones.

Private sector companies can also rent research lab space in the centre. Indian IT company Satyam has a dedicated innovation facility there with around 20 people while Cookson Electronics has a lab looking into electronics assembly and packaging using non-toxic materials.