Professor Nandini Vaidyanathan is a traveling teacher who teaches entrepreneurship in several ivy -league business schools around the world including Princeton, London School of Economics and National University of Singapore, overseas and in India in IIMA, IIMB, IIML and ISB. A year ago, she founded CARMa (Creating Access to Resources & Markets), (www.carmaconnect.in) with a lofty ambition: to change the karma of entrepreneurs in India. She writes a regular monthly column for the magazine, Entrepreneur. She is a TED speaker. She has just published her book Entrepedia, a step by step guide to becoming an entrepreneur in India. The book has a prelaunch sale of 50,000 copies and is on its way to becoming a best seller.

Here, she is sharing about CARMa offerings.

Our whole life revolves around entrepreneurs. We are passionate believers that India should be a country of a billion entrepreneurs – either you have your own enterprise or you think and feel so entrepreneurially that you feel like an entrepreneur even if you don’t own the enterprise.

We believe that the biggest pain point for all entrepreneurs, irrespective of what stage they are in, is access to resources and markets. And that’s where CARMa (Creating Access to Resources and Markets) comes in. CARMa addresses this pain point by:

• CARMa Sutra: Mentoring entrepreneurs (start-ups, mature enterprises and family businesses)
• CARMa Shala: An online 20-hour certificate course in Entrepreneurship for aspiring entrepreneurs, start-up entrepreneurs as well as employees who have P&L responsibility and are expected to think and behave like entrepreneurs
• AskYourMentor: Unique real-time ‘need-based’ mentoring when you require it.

CARMa Sutra
Entrepreneurs usually come to us and ask us two things: Will you validate my idea and on what basis do you pick your mentees.

Our answer is standard. No, we will not validate your idea because we have no authority (and we have no certain way of telling you) what will work or which idea might fail. All we will help you do is build a robust business model and such a strong value differentiator that even if the market gets flooded by competitors tomorrow, your customers will still swear by you.

And two, we don’t pick and choose our mentees. We look for just a few things – is the entrepreneur’s heart in the right place and does he have what it takes to last the entrepreneurial journey – the highs and the lows, the good and the bad. Once these two questions are out of the way, CARMa Sutra begins.

CARMa Sutra is our sustained 6-month mentorship program, which is a completely mentee-driven engagement:

• We mentor entrepreneurs in the startup phase, growth enterprises as well as family businesses.
• As an entrepreneur, you come to us and identify three areas of mentoring. These could be your vulnerable areas or so critical to building your business that not having a mentor is not an option.
• Once these are outlined, they are broken into milestones to ensure that you, the mentee, and your lead mentor (Sutradhar) are on the same page.
• Over the course of the six months, the lead mentor may bring in other mentors, who are domain experts, to mentor you.
• Write to carmasutra@carmaconnect.in for more or click here for more information: http://carmaconnect.in/carmasutra.php

CARMa Shala
Most people don’t become entrepreneurs in India, simply because they don’t know how. There is no course that tells you in simple and easy steps the things you need to get the idea off the drawing board into the market place.

There is no course in India which is India-centric, real-time and fitted within in the Indian framework. So what’s the point in knowing how to incorporate a company in America, when you want to set up shop in India?

And that’s where CARMa Shala comes into the picture:

• CARMa Shala is a 20-hour, 20-module online certificate course in Entrepreneurship.
• It is a go-to course, like a dictionary.
• If you want to become an entrepreneur, or, if you are in the start-up phase, CARMa Shala tells you in easy, simple, 20 steps, what are the things you need to do from the time you decide to become an entrepreneur to becoming market-ready.

For an individual registration, CARMa Shala costs just Rs. 2,650 (which includes a copy of the best-selling book Entrepedia). You get CARMa Shala through your college to get the benefit of bulk registrations. Click here for more: http://carmaconnect.in/carmashala_more.php

AskYourMentor:
If you’re an entrepreneur on the brink of a crisis or in the thick of it, wouldn’t it be nice if you could have access to a mentor right then and there? A mentor who is a subject-expert; a mentor who has the wisdom gained from experience to give you clarity and direction; and a mentor with whom you can have a trouble-shooting conversation when you need it, as you need it.

All this without paying an arm and a leg, which is what you would if you brought on board a consultant. Get on to www.carmaconnect.in, choose your mentor, buy his time in units of 30 minutes and get mentored instantly! Click here for more information/or to register now: http://carmaconnect.in/askyourmentor.php