Celebrate Entrepreneurs Helping Entrepreneurs In Chennai

In the true spirit of giving back, a community of Chennai entrepreneurs has come together to award partial scholarships to the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) global virtual incubator to three local startups.

The scholarship recipients were selected after participating in TiE Chennai’s Start-up Super Saturday in early March, during which Sramana Mitra gave a keynote talk and helped with judging a business pitch competition. To ensure full commitment to make the most of this opportunity, the recipients have also paid for a portion of their 1M/1M memberships. For one year, Vineet Neeraj/Kobster, Manigandan V/DACAM Systems, and Sathish K/Yakkay Technologies will each receive extensive incubation support to make sure each venture lives up to its potential.

TiE Chennai has been a huge supporter of 1M/1M for years, and through our ongoing relationship, several Chennai entrepreneurs have become exemplary 1M/1M members. Our hats go off to one such 1M/1M member, Suresh Sambandam, founder of Orangescape. He believes so strongly in giving back to local entrepreneurs and in the value the 1M/1M program has to offer, that he personally paid for a portion of these three scholarships.

Another key co-sponsor of these scholarships, who shares Suresh’s enthusiasm for giving back to local entrepreneurs, is Swaminathan K, Founder and CEO, Aspire Ventures. Swami is a serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, author, and specialist in internet, mobile and social media technologies. An alumnus of IIM Bangalore, he is passionate about incubating transformational business ideas and nurturing them into commercially viable and scalable business ventures. His current venture – myBskool.com – is India’s leading player in the area of MOOC’s in management education.

Likewise, the third scholarship co-sponsor is also committed to supporting early stage entrepreneurs. Maran Nagarajan, CEO & Founder, Kaar Technologies, is a young entrepreneur himself with a great passion for IT business. Maran left his job and started building his dream company in January 2006. Kaar Technologies is a super specialty SAP solution and services company that Maran built up from scratch and now employees over 300 people with niche SAP skills.

Any discussion about entrepreneurship in Chennai would be incomplete without mentioning all of the heavy lifting done by Srinivasan Viswanathan, Executive Director at TiE Chennai. As Vishy says, “Fortunately, we have several good people who help us out tremendously.” A standout contributor in the startup area is Dorai Thodla, Founder of iMorph Inc. Other key contributors are Chandu Nair and Pravin Shekar.

Together, this group initiated this effort to put serious entrepreneurs through the 1M/1M program as a way to make a meaningful contribution to their community. All of the time and thought they put into creating worthwhile events and programs for entrepreneurs in Chennai continues to make a real difference. We are proud to be working with them and to celebrate their accomplishments.

As related reading we also recommend Sramana’s article, The Rise of Entrepreneurship in Chennai, where she profiles 1M/1M premium members FreshDesk, OrangeScape, and InventionLabs.