Business Baazigar

Business Baazigar! Its a name of the Zee reality show that will pick India's best entrepreneur. Zee will air a 36-episode series with entries for the competiton from people from all walks of life from across the company.

Business Standard has a complete story on the competition.

In this real life drama, executives, students, housewives and even the retired, from cities as well as small towns and villages, will compete for the title of "India's best entrepreneur" and obtain funding to implement their idea. The show, being produced by 25 FPS Media, goes on air from January 2005.

The process will start by a call for entries, followed by a panel shortlisting the thousands of preliminary entries down to a manageable number of around 100.

These will then be further shortlisted to 20 who will compete with one another. According to the company, auditors of repute will supervise the entire shortlisting process to ensure completely transparency.

"The judging criteria would be the contestants' intelligence, strategic skills and their ability to think on their feet when time and money are at a premium. At the conclusion of each task, the winning team will be granted a lavish reward that will consist of money as well unforgettable experiences with the biggest and the best," the spokesperson said. The final two survivors will find their big dream funded by the big jury, he added.

Competitions like these are quite helpful to motivate young entrepreneurs. But having competitions alone is just not sufficient. The number of technology incubation centres in India is just meagre. Indian insitutions are beginning to learn the path to foster entrepreneurship but they still have a long way to go. IIT's have been able to make a start by setting up technology incubation centres. But we need not just 5 or 10 but on the scale of 500 - 1000 such centres!