IBM has announced a tie up with the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) for a series of IBM-NEN Mentor Melas to provide several hundred growing entrepreneurs in India the knowledge, support and connections to achieve their greatest impact. This is the first community initiative in a series that IBM will be engaging in as it gears to celebrate its Centennial on June 16th.

To be held across six cities in the country – Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune and NCR - the IBM-NEN Mentor Melas will comprise 12 mentoring sessions, in which nearly 400 volunteer IBM experts will mentor over 300 innovation-driven young entrepreneurs from a range of sectors, helping them overcome critical challenges. Each IBM mentor will have the opportunity to mentor 3 entrepreneurs, and each entrepreneur will have the opportunity to tap into the expertise of 3 IBM mentors, through separate 1:1 sessions that are facilitated and run by NEN in the mentor’s city.

The series will commence with the Mentor Mela at the Jyothi Nivas College, Bangalore.  Each Mentor Mela session will pair 30 NEN entrepreneurs with 3 different IBM experts. Every entrepreneur will have 45 minutes, one-on-one, with each of the 3 mentors to discuss any challenges that he/she is facing.

All the 30 IBM mentors present at each Mentor Mela will be top professionals from the company. They will come from the senior leadership and other senior management at IBM. Each expert will be a sector/domain specialist in his/her respective field. Basically, anyone w