After announcing the “first-ever awards for entrepreneurs in eastern India” last year, the city chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), has set out to ignite young minds in the state through a five-pronged initiative.

The global non-profit organisation focused on promoting entrepreneurship has formed a committee for seed capital, the most critical pre-requisite, with another panel set up to try and sell the values of entrepreneurship to college students.

“The idea is to remove the stigma attached to entrepreneurship and stress on the value of it as a co-curricular stream, possibly from the Plus-II level itself,” Shoummo K. Acharya, president of TiE Calcutta chapter, tells Metro.

Besides creating a programme to ensure home-grown enterprises get quality-control certification at a “lower cost”, the support group is also rolling out a programme for restructuring the BPO industry.

“The small BPOs can’t survive on their own. We are trying to energise merger and acquisition among them so that five small BPOs can become one large entity,” explains Viji Iyengar, executive director of TiE, Calcutta.

Formed in the Silicon Valley in 1992 by successful NRI entrepreneurs and professionals hailing mainly from the south Asian region, TiE helps budding entrepreneurs with advice and assistance from experienced entrepreneurs and professionals.

Following the TiEger Awards 2006, the catalyst body plans to hold one major national award every year, coupled with a business-plan award, for which data and nominations will be collected from March.