DFJ – TiE India Venture Challenge Meets with Success
Award Ceremony on February 20th at the Indian School of Business

New Delhi, Delhi, India, Wednesday, February 15, 2006 -- (Business Wire India)

The Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) India Venture Challenge, the first national level business plan competition in India has arrived at its final stages. The first ever nation wide contest to be held in India met with a stupendous response and saw participation of 125 budding and aspiring entrepreneurial teams from across India, representing both new ventures and existing early stage businesses. The 10 short listed candidates will present their business plans to a team of well selected judges and the award ceremony of the DFJ-TiE India Venture Challenge will be held at Indian School of Business (ISB) on February 20.

The panel of judges to evaluate the 10 finalists are Sarath Naru, MD APIDC, Ranjan Chak of Oak Investments, Raj Atluru and Mohan Lakhamraju from DFJ, N.S. Raghavan, founder of Infosys and Nadathur Holdings, Srini Raju founder of ILabs and Professor Chandrashekhar of ISB.

The 125 applicants went through two rounds of stringent evaluation and selection. At each round, participants were given feedback on their proposals. The organizers are now ready to announce two winners from the 10 finalists. The competition has been co-sponsored by Nadathur Holdings, ILabs Group and the ISB, Hyderabad.

As announced earlier, the first prizewinner will receive seed funding of USD 100000 and the second prize winner will receive seed funding of USD 50000. The seed funding is being provided by DFJ and Nadathur Holdings.

The event is a celebration of entrepreneurs and features such phenomenal entrepreneurial successes as Captain Gopinath of Air Deccan, N.S. Raghavan, founder of Infosys and Nadathur, Saurabh Srivastava, Member of TiE global board of trustees and President of Indian Venture Capital Association and Srini Raju, founder of ILabs and the TV9 news channel. Participants from DFJ include Raj Atluru, Managing Director and Mohan Lakhamraju, who leads their India investment initiatives.

Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) is actively investing in India, building on the valuable and highly successful experience gained through a prior related fund, Draper International. Draper International was one of the first venture funds to focus exclusively on India starting in the mid 90s and has invested in pioneering companies such as Rediff.com. DFJ has had many successful experiences with Indian entrepreneurs – the most talked about being the experience with Sabeer Bhatia’s Hotmail in the mid 90s.

According to Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Director of DFJ,“Entrepreneurial talent abounds in India and needs the right atmosphere and encouragement for the skills to be honed and met with success. The DFJ TiE India Venture Challenge was launched with the primary intent of supporting and encouraging the development of entrepreneurial acumen in India.”

Sridar Iyengar, President TiE Inc. said “TiE is very pleased to partner with DFJ in this unique business plan contest connecting current and potential entrepreneurs to mentors and capital in the US and India. Many of our chapters in India have an active mentoring program. This nationwide initiative however increases our reach beyond the current eco-system. It also, along with other initiatives we will be announcing shortly, is part of a comprehensive program we have to evangelize entrepreneurship in India by creating Awareness, promoting Advocacy and providing Assistance”.

According to NS Raghavan, Founder and Chairman of Nadathur Holdings, “DFJ’s and Nadathur’s vision are well aligned with regards to promoting early stage entrepreneurship in India. Given this alignment in vision, we are happy to part sponsor the seed money for the event.”

Nadathur has contributed USD 50,000 of the total seed money for the winners of this event.

About DFJ

Draper Fisher Jurvetson is the world leader in seed and early stage venture capital. Since 1985, DFJ has created a global network of affiliated venture funds with over $3 billion in capital commitments and offices in the major technology centers around the world. DFJ has proven expertise in identifying and helping extraordinary entrepreneurs who want to change the world. Over the past 20 years DFJ has been proud to back over 300 companies across a myriad of sectors including industry changing catalysts such as Hotmail (acquired by MFST), Baidu (BIDU), Skype (acquired by EBAY), United Online (UNTD), Overture (acquired by YAHOO), Interwoven (IWOV), 411 (acquired by YAHOO) and Parametric (PMTC) . For more information about DFJ, please visit www.dfj.com

About TiE

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) is a global not-for-profit organization focused on promoting entrepreneurship through mentoring, networking and education. TiE helps budding entrepreneurs through advice, guidance and assistance from successful & experienced entrepreneurs and professionals.

TiE’s greatest strength is a network through 42 cities in 9 countries that consists of many participants in the entrepreneurial ecosystem – successful & experienced as well as budding entrepreneurs, venture capital firms, angel investors, service providers, etc. TiE makes continuous efforts to interconnect this network in a way delivers real value to all our constituents (www.tie.org)

About Nadathur Holdings & Investments

Nadathur Holdings & Investments is a venture firm established by N.S. Raghavan, Founder and Former Joint Managing Director of Infosys. Today, the firm supports a portfolio of over seventeen companies across industries such as Life Sciences, Information Technology, and Engineering Services. In addition, N.S.Raghavan helped set up the N. S. Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) at IIM Bangalore to encourage entrepreneurship in the country and help incubate start-ups. For more information about Nadathur please visit www.nadathur.com

Details of the Competition

· The business plan competition is a national event with participation from four regional centers:

-- TiE New Delhi,
-- TiE Mumbai,
-- TiE Hyderabad and
-- TiE Bangalore.

· It consists of multiple rounds of evaluation:

-- The first round is based on an executive summary of the business
-- The second round is based on the full business plan submitted by the participants short listed in the second round
-- And a final round where a further short listed set of candidates present their plans in front of a panel of judges.

· All the short listed entries received feedback from the judges to help them improve their plans.

-- The selected entries in the second round can seek the advice of a designated mentor to improve upon their plans and will compete at the national level final round.

· The finals will be conducted at ISB where the finalists will present their plans to judges.

· The first prizewinner will receive seed financing of $100,000 from DFJ to build their business.

· And the second prizewinner will receive seed funding of USD 50000.

· The competition will culminate in an awards function which will be held on 20th February at ISB