| Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year to be announced tonight.
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| The countdown to the Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the Year Award started with jury interviews of candidates being completed yesterday in a nine-hour marathon session.
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| The nine-member panel will meet once again to decide on the final winner, who will be announced on Saturday night at the gala award function.
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| Like in past years, the tempo has slowly built up with candidates meeting jury members not just formally. Informal discussions have been facilitated through three evenings of cocktail parties where candidates and judges exchanged notes and got a chance to interact further.
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| Normally, the winner is decided by consensus. This year, the focus is partly on India as Sunil Bharti Mittal is jury chairman.
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| With India representative Kumar Mangalam Birla being talked about as a possible winner, Mittal has an enviable task to balance various issues. Of 35 candidates who were called for the final interviews, five are shortlisted by the jury after exhaustive meetings.
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| From these, the jury determines the final winner. This year, from among the 35 winners, two from Taiwan and Indonesia did not turn up at the last moment.
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| The buzz goes that India, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain could well produce the winner. India’s Birla has strong credentials.
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| With a $8 billion group turnover, he possibly heads the largest business group among the candidates here. He has age on his side and with India-born Vikas Goel of eSys Technologies from Singapore, he is among the youngest in the group. But a question that a few are asking is — can one bring forth entrepreneurial spirit as an inheritor?
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| Birla’s story of having taken the leadership of the group at a very young age, in difficult circumstances (when his father Aditya Birla passed away), and having effected a crucial transformation in the industry, has caught the imagination of many. There are definitely some who are betting on Birla.
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| Interestingly, the other candidate who is making waves is 35-year old Vikas Goel. He brought eSys Technologies from nothing to a $2 billion-company in five years and this is seen as a remarkable feat by many.
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| He built an IT distribution and manufacturing company from scratch through an innovative business model in a short span of time. But questions on the sustainability of the business model and his ability to maintain growth momentum remain in the minds of a few.
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| The German duo of C Anton Milner (CEO) and Reiner Lemoine (CTO) of Q-Cells AG is also hot on the buzz. The company is a manufacturer of solar cells and in five years has clinched a spot in the top five of the world’s largest manufacturers of the product.
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| In the past, India’s Ernst & Young country winners have been strong candidates from large business groups, like NR Narayana Murthy, BM Munjal, Ratan Tata, Sunil Bharti and Mukesh Ambani. While some like Tata and Ambani did not take part in the award selection process, others like Munjal and Bharti lost by narrow margins.
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| The past few years have seen a close finish between the winner and runner-up. As award tempo peaks and shifts into the fast lane, the weekend will reveal how tight the race has been or if there are any big surprises at all. |
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