Announcing TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge

I am happy to announce the launch of the TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008. This is the second edition of the challenge which we rolled out in 2006 where we invited entrepreneurs (start ups and early stage companies) to showcase their ventures.

TiE has been at the forefront of creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem worldwide and their partnership with Canaan for the challenge is a part of the same endeavor. The TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge is our sincere attempt to celebrate the ability to think independently, evaluate and execute by high quality teams.

With the entrepreneurial environment in India booming, it is important that budding entrepreneurs are nurtured through mentoring and are offered the right platform to ideate under the guidance of leading business experts. Through the TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge, we hope to provide a never before opportunity to these entrepreneurs and help them understand what it takes to be the next big thing! With our learnings over the last challenge, we have worked towards making this year’s challenge bigger and more exciting. Some of the benefits the winners will receive:

§      Microsoft Award: At least one finalist will be invited to join the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program where they will get access, guidance and support on the Microsoft Platform as well as market development support from Microsoft. Microsoft will also promote these companies in their ecosystem.

§      ISB Program: A representative from each of the winning teams will be invited to attend a course pro bono at the Center for Executive Education at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Typical value of this course is greater than Rs.300,000. The course identified is ‘Accelerated Management Programme - Increasing Managerial Effectiveness’

§      Mentoring: All finalists will be mentored by TiE-ENP (Entrepreneurship Nurturing Program) to refine their business plans for the presentation to the jury. The Winners would be mentored by NASSCOM, Canaan Partners, and Jury Members for three months after the event

§      Access to Investors: All finalists will have access to investors from TiE, Indian Angel Network and other early stage investors, while Viedea will provide investment consulting

§      Publicity through media - Winners will be featured in Business Today and on CNBC enabling them to build awareness about their companies & products.

We are thankful to our online partners, namely PLUGGD.IN, proto.in, Venture Intelligence, Webyantra, HeadStart, techTribe, VentureWoods and Kamla Bhatt who are working with us to ensure that the largest section of entrepreneurs can hear about this Challenge, and avail of the benefits this Challenge offers them.

For more information on the submission, deadlines, guidelines and other details please log onto http://www.tienewdelhi.org/canaan/

Alok Mittal, Managing Director

Portfolio News

Aperto Networks, a maker of WiMax base stations and network equipment, has recently raised $20 million in a venture round. Canaan Partners, a previous backer also participated in this round. With this round Aperto brought the total venture funding to $159 million, since its inception nine years ago.

CoAxia(TM) recently secured $11.5 million in venture funding to continue its ongoing clinical trials. Canaan Partners co-led this round along with other existing investors. With this investment CoAxia will continue its SENTIS pivotal FDA trial of NeuroFlo Perfusion Augmentation Therapy in acute ischemic stroke, as well as other ongoing feasibility studies to evaluate use of the same technology in additional stroke populations.

Events

Web Innovation 2008 will take place at the Grand Hyatt in Mumbai on May 8, 2008. This year the conference will address Web 2.0 workplace technologies and their business implications and will focus on the next generation of web technologies, methodologies, vendors, and culture and also on social networking, blogs, wikis and Open APIs and their place in the enterprise, popular technologies and those shaping the future direction of the web. Mr. Alok Mittal, MD Canaan Partners will be speaking at the event during Track 3 ‘Early stage financing in context of technology based businesses’.

Proto.in Delhi edition is now open for nominations. In its fourth edition the event will take place in July with the last day for nominations being May 31, 2008. Proto.in is a technology showcase event which aims to bring together the startup ecosystem together, and throws the spotlight on some of the best startups that are coming up in the Indian ecosystem. The companies are given a six minute slot during which they present the company, team and demonstrate their product (with a working prototype) to show what their product is. The six minute session is followed by a quick round of questions from the audience, after which they are given a space on the demo floor, where they can meet and interact with the elite audience that attends the event to increase awareness, market traction, forge potential partnerships, validate their markets, and also perhaps raise funds from investors.