Of these, Subhash Chandra will now be attending the 13th annual Earnst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year International conference in California to be held in November this year. These awards were given by the former Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, at a function in the Capital yesterday evening.

The winners were judged by a jury comprising Deepak Parekh, chairman of HDFC, Amit Mitra, secretary-general of Ficci, B M Munjal, chairman of the Hero Group, Isher Judge Ahluwalia, president and CEOof ICRIER and N Kumar, vice-chairman, Sanmar Group. Twenty finalists were short-listed after receiving over 500 nominations to select winners in the four category.

Of the 20 short-listed entrepreneurs, about 10 belonged to companies in the information technology sector and nearly six in the pharmaceutical sector.

The short-listed entrepreneurs from amongst whom the final winners were selected are: Anil Moolchandani of Archies Greetings, Arun Jain of Polaris Software, B Ramalinga Raju of Satyam Computers, B V R Mohan Reddy of Infotech Enterprises, G V K Reddy of GVK Industries, Kalpathi S Suresh of SSI Ltd, K Anji Reddy of Dr Reddy's Laboratories, K Raghvendra Rao of Orchids Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, K Varaprasad Reddy of Shantha Biotechnics, M S Shashikiran of Hical Magnetics, P D Gupta of Liberty Shoes, Raj Jain of R S Software, Rajendra S Pawar of NIIT, Rajiv C Mody of Silicon Automation Ltd, Ramesh Gelli of Global Trust Bank, Rohinton Screwvala of Unilazer Group, Subhash Chandra of Zee Telefilms,Sudhir D Sharma of Network Solutions, Sunil Bharti Mittal of Bharti Enterprises and Yunus G Bilakhia of Mitsui Industries Ltd.

Founded and produced by Earnst & Young in the US in 1986, the Entrepreneurs of the Year programme is global in its scope with the awards being presented in 19 countries. Past winners in the US have included such successful entrepreneurial stories as Dell Computers, Citrix Systems and Starbucks among others.