MUMBAI, India – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently collaborated for the first time with Indian powerhouse venture capital firm Reliance Venture Asset Management Ltd. The partnership coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Cambridge, Mass.-based school’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and, according to Reliance executives, is part of a new trend in which a growing number of Indian firms are partnering with American business schools and the entrepreneurs they produce.

In April, Reliance formed a similar partnership with Stamford University, becoming the only Indian sponsor of the Connecticut institution’s own business plan competition.

Reliance Venture Asset Management is the corporate venture capital arm of the Mumbai-based Reliance ADA Group. The competition, which has grown from a $10,000 contest a decade ago to a $100,000 competition today, aims to develop the business ideas of MIT students and non-students alike.

Harshal Shah, Reliance Venture Asset Management’s CEO and board member, said sponsorship of the competition makes sense for Reliance. The MIT alumnus calls his alma mater among the best schools in the world. Shah earned a bachelor’s degree in management, and another in electrical engineering and computer science, from MIT.

In fact, if it were up to him, Reliance Venture Asset Management would continue to fund the $100K Entrepreneurship Competition in perpetuity, said Shah. While Shah said he is not at liberty to disclose the amount of the Reliance sponsorship in the competition, competition Managing Director Daniel Vannoni said he sees tremendous value in Reliance Venture Asset Managament’s affiliation with the MIT program.

Reliance Venture Asset Management has $4 billion under management and provides financial backing to startup, young and growing companies.

What makes the competition attractive is MIT’s stellar track record of producing good students, many of whom find their way into the next generation of successful business leaders, according to Shah.

“MIT has the uncanny knack of being able to identify not just entrepreneurs but also serial entrepreneurs who have been successful many times over, a factor that is hugely attractive to a company like Reliance Asset Management,” Shah said.

For Shah, a key component of success is about trying to create partnerships that will foster the next wave of entrepreneurs and business leaders in the United States and India, he said. Since growing to a $100,000 competition, MIT’s entrepreneur contest “has transformed from being a small effort to encourage innovation into something of an industry standard for being able to identify the best ideas and the best entrepreneurs,” said Shah.

According to Shah, India and the United States are on the cusp of a trend reversal in which Indian companies are now beginning to provide significant financial support to American business-focused colleges and universities, and by extension partner with a new generation of American entrepreneurs.

“The reverse trend of Indian companies tying up with foreign universities to fund foreign startups has just begun … India, like the United States, is a land of opportunity,” Shah added. The trend will help create what Shah characterized as a healthy, competitive environment for both countries.

Shah and his company are making concrete the kind of U.S.-Indian entrepreneurial collaboration of which he speaks. In January, Reliance hand-picked a group of MIT students from the school’s Sloan School of Management to work for the company on a six-month consulting project, said Shah.

Reliance Asset Management has invested in Dhama Apparel Innovations, which makes thermally regulated clothing in India. The company’s founder won MIT’s Business Plan Competition in 2005.

Each $100K contest is broken down into six distinct categories, consisting of Development, Energy, Life Science, Products and Sciences, Mobile and Web/IT. The competition consists of three separate contests, including Elevator Pitch, designed to teach entrepreneurs how to give a 60-second synopsis of their idea to a potential investor.

This year’s contest drew 350 individuals, from which 12 finalists were chosen.

The second competition is the Executive Summary Contest. At least one team member must be an MIT student. Winners are selected in the winter. This year’s grand prize winner is interactive coupon platform that pushes coupons as consumers browse and scan products in grocery and retail settings, beating 139 other teams.

The competition culminates in the Business Plan Competition, in which teams are judged on the strength of their business plans to produce a viable company. This year, the business plan contest began with 204 entries, which were whittled down to 25 semi-finalists before going in front of judges in May.

Although each of the individual contests can function separately form the other two, Vannoni says some entrants find team members interested in joining them to expand an elevator pitch entry into the executive summary and business plan contests. The final round for the Elevator Pitch contest of judging for this year’s contest took place in October. A group called Nano-Engineered Concrete took home the $5,000 grand prize. Included in the Elevator Pitch Contest are two $2,000 runners-up and a $1,000 Audience Choice Award winner, said Vannoni.

MIT’s flagship $100K competition is the Business Plan Competition, which takes place in early spring. The first-place winner takes home $100,000. Final judging for the 2009/2010 competition took place May 12, with the winning team, C-Crete, backing a nano-engineered concrete that strengthens traditional concrete.

Instead of being judged on formal criteria, teams “that can show solid research behind [their] idea” are the ones that generally win the competition, said Vannoni.

Judges are looking to see if competitors can prove their product’s market viability and that they can execute their business plan, as well as show market opportunities that exist for their respective companies.

That Reliance Venture Asset Management’s sponsorship of MIT’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition may lead to investment opportunities for the company seem very likely, given that it already has  invested in Scalable Display, a digital display software producer and participant in MIT’s VentureShips program, which provides hands-on training for the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders.

India has been looked at historically as an offshore center for businesses looking to capitalize on the economy of hiring Indian workers for American companies, Shah said. But he said he believes that India’s “full value had not been captured yet.”

Beyond Reliance Venture Asset Management, 25 sponsors from various business sectors comprise the competition’s financial backbone. Google Ventures, Novartis Venture Funds and Massachusetts Life Sciences Center are among the financial supporters.

The 2009/2010 entrepreneur’s competition received a bit of an update with a nod to the role technology, specifically social networking, which now plays in everyone’s lives. Added to this year’s Elevator Pitch, Executive Summary Contest and Business Plan competitions is what is known as the Twitch contest. Similar to a social networking Twitter “tweet” post, Twitch encourages brevity by limiting contestants’ business idea to 140 characters or less. The first Twitch contest carries $5,000 in winnings.

“The Twitch contest gives people the chance to practice their skills in social media in a way that will grow their business,” said Vannoni.

According to the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition’s official Web site, the contest has helped launch 120 companies with a value of $12.5 billion over the past 10 years. Many of these companies choose to stay close to home. Two examples of past competition winners are Cambridge-based companies Akamai and Harmonix.

Web application company Akamai made it to the semi-final round 12 years ago in what was then MIT’s $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. The company’s 2009 fourth-quarter revenue was about $200 million. Akamai has an office in Bangalore, India.

Harmonix Music Systems Inc., a developer of music for online gaming, was founded in 1995, during which time the company’s two founders worked at MIT’s Media Laboratory. MTV Networks acquired Harmonix for $175 million in 2006.

Vannoni said that the 120 businesses launched as a result of the competition have created about 2,500 Boston-area jobs.

Although any business competition like MIT’s is happy to tout real-world success, Vannoni’s said the competition is and will continue to be first and foremost a learning opportunity for students.

“While we’re trying to start businesses, it is an education program,” he said.

In addition to its collaboration with MIT, Reliance Venture Asset Management signed on for an exclusive partnership with the Stamford University’s Business Association of Stamford Entrepreneurial Students in April. The company plans to participate in Stanford’s E-Challenge, the school’s business plan competition.

Reliance Venture Asset Management’s E-Challenge involvement does not end with financial backing. In addition to being the only Indian company affiliated with the program, Reliance executives also will serve as judges to decide contest winners. As Reliance Venture Asset Management extends its affiliations with U.S. business schools, MIT’s competition is also reaching out to other countries, with companies like South Korea’s SK Telecom and Italy’s Angel Lab Venture joining the list of sponsors for the entrepreneurship competition, Vannoni said.