TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) Chennai has set the ball rolling for its annual awards by calling for nominations under three categories – Start-up, Scale-up and Sustaining. There will also be a Lifetime award.

Unlike in the previous years, when the winners were selected by a jury, this year TiE Chennai has decided to do it differently.

Rajan Srikanth, Chairman of TiE Chennai’s awards committee, says the process of selecting the winners is being democratised, with TiE members voting for their choice among the short-listed nominees in each category.

Instead of calling only the winners on to the stage and presenting them the awards, this time all the short-listed candidates will have their moment under the arc lights, a short audio-visual clip on them and their ventures will be played and then the winner announced.

The idea, says Srikanth, an angel investor and mentor for entrepreneurs, is to accept the fact that the awards are a recognition of successful entrepreneurs by peers, for peers. “The idea is to make the awards aspirational like the Oscars,” he said.

The nominees will get to learn from each other. “The whole notion that entrepreneurs learn best from their peers is at the heart of what we are doing at the TiE awards this time,” says Srikanth. Entrepreneurs are among the most avid readers of books on success stories, but what they learn from other entrepreneurs will be more than what they will be able to glean from the books.

The TiE awards, according to him, are a vehicle to celebrate successful entrepreneurs and to learn from them. If there is a learning embedded in the process of identifying the best, the process is so much richer, says Srikanth and adds that when you outsource that process (to a jury), you are subverting the process of learning.

Venkat Viswanathan, Chairman, LatentView Analytics, and head of the Start-up category, expected this category to receive the most nominations. They hoped to unearth hidden gems by looking at the idea, the team, their execution capability and whether they had met early milestones, which was a clear sign that the venture was doing well.

Chitra Sivakumar, Managing Partner, TimeLinks, and head of the Scale-up category, said ventures in this category would have figured out the market fit for their product and the business model.

The qualities to look for included whether the venture was growing in terms of customers, revenue and repeat orders. The ventures would have to demonstrate their growth strategy and efficiency of that growth.

Typically, ventures in this category will be 4-8 years in operation. The ventures would exhibit a hunger for growth, not just in terms of topline but to enter new geographies.

Balaraman Jayaraman, co-founder and President, Congruent Solutions, and head of the Sustaining category, draws the analogy of a test match player versus one who excels in the shorter T20 format, to short-list entrepreneurs in this category. That is, they must have been in business for 8-10 years and demonstrated the ability to keep going.

“We are looking at people who have shown resilience to adapt and innovate to look at new markets, new products,” he said and added that innovation could be in the way marketing is done or the geographical spread. The ventures should have also done their business in a responsible manner, with the employees taken care of and attrition within reasonable levels.

The Lifetime Achievement Award, according to V Chandrasekhar, CEO, Secova and head of this category, is the most prestigious award going by the previous recipients who include SS Badrinath of Sankara Nethralaya, industrialists Suresh Krishna and Mallika Srinivasan.

This year, TiE will look for those who have made significant social contribution, enabling a large number of people in some way; should have built a successful institution that is self-sustaining and growing; should stand for the highest standards of integrity and ethics; should be driven by vision; and, someone who is under-recognised.

“We want to look at people who have broken barriers,” he added.