This year, budding entrepreneurs competing for thousands of dollars worth of prizes in the Wharton Business Plan Competition need to fulfill an additional criterion - they must be Indian.
The annual competition - which usually requires that candidates be affiliated with the University - recently teamed up with a leading Indian newspaper to offer the same entrepreneurial opportunities to Indian college students.
And the 600 preliminary entries received may mean that the students are taking full advantage of it.
"India is the best place to look to for new business opportunities today," said Megan Mitchell, director of the Wharton Business Plan Competition.
The WBPC - which was launched in 1998 - allows students with ideas for start-up companies to pitch them to a team of judges who critique their ideas and choose three finalists. A $70,000 start-up fund is split between those three finalists to help them get started on their projects. The winner receives even more cash prizes.
Past winners of the business plan competition range from FibrinX - a company that provides artificial tissue to seal open wounds - to PetPlan, which provides insurance coverage for American cats and dogs.
But while most American winners have focused their business plans on the medical industry, their Indian counterparts are taking a different approach.
V. Subramanian, a postgraduate student in the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, is one of the five finalists chosen for the business plan competition.
"It feels great to have your idea valued by venture capitalists," Subramanian said.
In some ways, his idea - software solutions for Indian construction companies - couldn't be more different than those of the American winners.
And Subramanian is not alone. DuraFibre - another finalist - proposed carbon-fiber manufacturing solutions for the automobile industry in India. The team, which is made up of three post-graduate students say they were "quite confident" of being chosen.
Team member Ankit Mathur, a postgraduate student in the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, said he and his teammates built a car in the annual American Formula SAE competition, co-sponsored by General Motors, Ford and Daimler-Chrysler.
One unusual competitor is promising empowerment to Indian housewives. Vikas Gupta, a post-graduate student at Xavier Labor Relations Institute in Jamshedpur wants to provide advanced technological knowledge, business-etiquette lessons and even fashion tips for every Indian housewife.
The final round of the competition will take place on Nov. 1, at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai. It will coincide with the launch of the India Knowledge@Wharton program.
