Abstract:
Today world is experiencing the entrepreneurial revolution. Economic and technological advancements opened up a new horizon for entrepreneurship development. The growing economy and right eco-system provide more supportive environment for practicing entrepreneurship than before. However, there are plenty of challenges that an entrepreneur has to face. Raising start up capital for a business venture has always been a bigger challenge, particularly for knowledge based and innovative ventures. Beginning with resource constraints for such ventures, this paper attempts to present a comprehensive scenario of available funding options such as bootstrapping techniques, incubation centres, angel investors, venture capital and private equity; for aspiring entrepreneurs in knowledge based sectors. There are many scattered empirical studies on such funding options that describe the traits of these institutions individually but only few studies analyze such institutions and mechanisms comprehensively. The study also relates the stages of venture development such as seed, startup, expansion and early expansion with the funding options as mentioned above. Further, the availability of incubation centres, angel capital, venture capital and private equity in India, has also been discussed. The paper concludes with various programmes and events initiated to encourage the emerging entrepreneurs in the country such as business plan competitions; events of National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) The Indus Entrepreneur (TiE) and Headstart.
