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TATA NEN Hottest Startups is a non-profit initiative, designed to support and promote young, high value companies in India. Its objective is to make startups synonymous with dynamism, fun, innovation, excellence and high potential.
Structure: Balancing engagement with credibility
- Showcasing the value of nominated startups
- Expert evaluation process for every nominated startup
- Raising the public's awareness and appreciation of these companies through publicity, and engaging the public through the voting process
What do the 30 Shortlisted Startups Get?
The 30 shortlisted startups get:
- Publicity in special supplements in HT Mint and other print and online publications (ongoing)
- Intensive coverage on HottestStartups.in
- To campaign at NENOnline.org, reaching over 55,000 registered users, including students, entrepreneurs, and faculties of leading universities
- To campaign at Hottest Startups on-ground events (ongoing)
What do the 5 Winners of the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards Get?
The 5 winners of the TATA NEN Hottest Startups get:
- Elaborate Profiling in HT Mint (Print and Online)
- Additional publicity in DARE, Business Gyan and Smart Techie, and other leading publications
- TCS SMB to provide common office applications & vertical specific applications free of cost as part of its IT-as-a Service concept, to the winning startups in the areas of manufacturing, retail, healthcare & education
- Support from India's leading incubators including CIIE, IIM-A and NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore
- Professional help from Microsoft through its Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program
- Pitch to investors including Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels
> Learn more on TATA NEN Hottest Startups Benefits
What are the Eligibility Criteria?
The eligibility criteria for the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards are as follows:
- A registered business (not an idea or plan)
- Headquartered in India
- 5 years or younger (founded in 2003 or later)
- Independent business - not subdivision
What makes a startup HOT?
A HOT Startup:
- Is innovative in operations, product or service, or marketing
- Is solving a hard problem
- Is Gaining traction - either with increasing number of customers or in research and development
- Has the potential to disrupt its industry
- Exhibits a great combination of passion & opportunity
How are the Winners Chosen?
- The final 5 winners are companies with the most genuine votes chosen from the pool of 30 shortlisted companies.
- Winners will be declared shortly after Dec 22.
- Winners receive a combination of business support and publicity. View Benefits.
- The 30 shortlisted companies are those with both maximum number of votes and highest expert rating.
- If there is a tie in the overall ranking for the shortlist, first the higher expert rating will be considered as tiebreaker and then the number of votes.
- If both the expert rating and number of votes are equal, the rank will be tied.
Phase II Clarifications
Once voting closes on Dec 22, there will be an audit period from Dec 23, 08 to Jan 9, 09. NEN may announce the Winners at any time, at their discretion, to accommodate any auditing they deem necessary.
Winners will be those who have the most genuine votes, as determined by Ernst & Young, the Tata NEN Hottest Startups Official Tabulators.
Voting rules:
What is a genuine vote? A voter must be:
- Voting on his/her own behalf
- Informed about the contest and making a conscious choice to vote for a company
- Not getting "paid" to vote for a company
Phase II Voting Process
Voting shall continue to be by both SMS and online. A voter may vote only once for each company
(as in Phase 1).
Online votes will continue to require the voter to register. However, if the voter has already registered with us in Phase 1, they will not be required to register again.
During Phase 2, every SMS voter will be required to provide similar information as the online voters, in order for the vote to be deemed genuine. A voter voting by SMS must provide: his or her name, the name of the company they are voting for, and the name of the awards, in addition to the short code for the contest and the company ID.
SMS Voting Process
Example:
If a voter named Ajay Kumar wants to vote for "ABC Company", which has the company code 18, then he must send the following message to 56767:
HSU 18 Ajay Kumar ABC Company TataNENHottestStartups
So in general that means the voter types:
HSU<space>[company code]<space>[voter first name]<space>[voter last name]<space>[name of company]<space>TataNENHottestStartups
Remember, the message must be sent to 56767.
Notes:
- Minor spelling errors will not automatically disqualify the SMS vote.
- SMS votes that include all the information listed above shall still be subject to audit.
- SMS votes that do not include all the information listed above shall not be considered genuine.
Ethical Conduct: Must-Know Rules
It's come to our attention that some people - a small minority - are cheating to get votes.
Hottest Startups is designed to be a fair, healthy and effective platform to showcase startups in India. Therefore, unethical behaviour cannot be allowed. And only by dealing with such behaviour can we preserve and build the value of what we are creating together.
What is unethical behaviour?
Unethical behaviour includes but is not limited to the following:
- Putting false information on your Nomination Form
- Voting on someone's behalf
- Causing someone to vote without them knowing that they are voting
- Buying votes
What's included in buying votes? Let's make this black and white: no one should get an incentive for voting for a specific company. This means: no Rs. 100 coupons; no prizes for voting for a particular startup; no give-aways.
- Hiring individuals or firms that engage in any of the above behaviours
No Nominee may engage in the above behaviour either directly or indirectly.
Ultimately, a voter must be:
- Voting on his/her own behalf
- Informed about the contest and making a conscious choice to vote for a company
- Not getting "paid" to vote for a company
Breaching any of these requirements in order to get votes is unethical and therefore unacceptable.
Phase II Auditing Processes
Once voting closes on Dec 22, there will be an audit period from Dec 23, 08 to Jan 9, 09. NEN may announce the Winners at any time, at their discretion, to accommodate any auditing they deem necessary.
Phase I Auditing Processes
As of now, we are putting the following processes in place:
- Identifying and purging false id's from the system, along with all their votes
- Verifying new registrations before allowing voting
- Researching IP addresses for unexplained spikes or other suspicious voting patterns
- Researching questionable practices that have come to our attention
- Engaging an external auditor to verify the selection processes, and verify information provided by short-listed Nominees.
We plan to work with an External Auditor on an ongoing basis, so that, together, we all can continue to build a strong platform for entrepreneurs.
What are the consequences of cheating?
Disqualification from Hottest Startups.
At this point:
Because we had not posted these rules on ethical conduct earlier (frankly, we thought it was obvious), we will contact those companies whose practices are questionable, and see if we can find a solution that includes eliminating votes, rather than barring the companies.
However, going forward, anyone found to be violating the Ethical Conduct Rules will be barred from competing.
Terms and Conditions
- National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) retains the exclusive right to include and/or remove any nominee from the contest at any time whatsoever, at its sole discretion.
- NEN reserves all rights to make prospective and/or retrospective change(s) and/ or amendment(s) to the existing Rules, at its sole discretion, without any prior notice.
- The outcome of the voting and/or the decision made by NEN regarding voting shall be final and binding on the Nominee(s) and in no event shall the Nominee(s) dispute the decision made by NEN and/or its employees in connection to the awards and/or otherwise.
- The Nominee(s) of the awards agree that he/she shall indemnify and keep indemnified and hold harmless NEN, its employees, officers, contractors or any other person in relation to any injury/damage/harm/loss suffered by him/her, in any manner whatsoever in connection with the awards and shall also not file in person and/or through any family member and/or any third party applications, criminal and/or civil proceedings in any courts or forum in India against NEN to claim any damages and/ or reliefs and/ or otherwise.
- NEN is in no manner whatsoever responsible and/or shall not be held liable in any manner whatsoever for any loss, injury, death, mental trauma caused to the Nominee(s) in any manner whatsoever, in connection to the awards and/ or otherwise towards the Nominee(s) in any manner whatsoever.
- The terms of these Rules shall be construed in accordance with the laws of India and in case of any dispute or any other matter arising in reference to the awards and/ or otherwise shall be referred to a sole arbitrator to be appointed by NEN and shall be governed by the provisions of Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, amended from time to time. The venue for arbitration shall be Bangalore and the same shall be conducted in English language. The costs, charges and expenses in connection to arbitration shall be solely borne by the Nominee(s) disputing the same.
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