Media Releases

TiE Global announces partnership with University of Toronto and MaRS Discovery District

June 10, 2011

TORONTO, ON — TiE Glob­al is very pleased to announce a part­ner­ship of TiE Cat­a­lyst, its first Glob­al Vir­tu­al Chap­ter, with the pres­ti­gious Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and the lead­ing inno­va­tion cen­tre MaRS Dis­cov­ery Dis­trict, locat­ed in Toron­to.

This part­ner­ship will pro­vide a forum to entre­pre­neurs world­wide for strate­gic explo­ration of emerg­ing new fron­tiers at the inter­sec­tion of engi­neer­ing, bio-med­ical sci­ences, and IT.  The announce­ment coin­cides with the gath­er­ing of 1000 North Amer­i­can mem­bers of the Indi­an dias­po­ra at the mini Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) in Toron­to today.

“We are delight­ed to part­ner on this new ini­tia­tive with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and the MaRS Dis­cov­ery Dis­trict — two high­ly respect­ed orga­ni­za­tions that have been out­stand­ing in pro­mot­ing inno­va­tion and dis­cov­ery.” said Ashok Rao, Chair­man of TiE Glob­al.   “Togeth­er we will advance our shared goal of assist­ing entre­pre­neurs and star­tups in the field of biotech and IT,”  Rao added.

“We are very excit­ed about this three way part­ner­ship, giv­en our com­mon com­mit­ment to accel­er­ate inno­va­tion and entre­pre­neur­ship. TiE was found­ed by glob­al vision­ar­ies like Kan­w­al Rekhi and Suhas Patil.  TiE Cat­a­lyst will ben­e­fit tremen­dous­ly in its part­ner­ship with Drs Treur­nicht and Nay­lor, both glob­al thinkers who bring along with their pres­ti­gious insti­tu­tions deep domain expe­ri­ence and rich diver­si­ty.” said Dr. Nan­di­ni Tan­don, TiE Glob­al Trustee and the Chair of TiE Cat­a­lyst.  Dr. Tan­don has led the effort on TiE Cat­a­lyst, and her vision is to have this pro­gram sup­port a broad spec­trum of entre­pre­neurs glob­al­ly.

Dr. Nan­di­ni Tan­don is Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Lumi­ra Cap­i­tal, a North Amer­i­can life sci­ences ven­ture cap­i­tal fund.  She has been a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist for the past 10 years and has diverse oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence in life sci­ence indus­try span­ning more than a decade.

TiE Global’s part­ner­ship with MaRS Dis­cov­ery Dis­trict and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to lever­ages sev­er­al strengths of the Toron­to region and Cana­di­an entre­pre­neur­ial con­text, and has huge poten­tial for build­ing con­nec­tions back to India.

MaRS is a world-renowned hub pro­vid­ing busi­ness ser­vices to ear­ly-stage enter­pris­es across the spec­trum of high-tech activ­i­ty.  Health­care, bio­science, engi­neer­ing, and IT are strong­ly rep­re­sent­ed among MaRS client com­pa­nies.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to anchors a net­work of 10 pres­ti­gious aca­d­e­m­ic hos­pi­tals, and is one of a hand­ful of uni­ver­si­ties glob­al­ly with con­ver­gent strength across all the theme dis­ci­plines of the mini-PBD.

Com­ment­ing from MaRS, Dr Ilse Treur­nicht said, “The broad Toron­to region is home to one of the world’s largest Indi­an dias­po­ra com­mu­ni­ties.  MaRS has been proud to part­ner with TiE Toron­to and is delight­ed to extend its col­lab­o­ra­tive net­work through this excit­ing new con­nec­tion with TiE Glob­al and TiE Cat­a­lyst.”

Treur­nicht, who holds a DPhil in Chem­istry from Oxford, is a for­mer ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist who cur­rent­ly over­sees the MaRS Cen­tre and its broad suite of entre­pre­neur­ship and inno­va­tion pro­grams.

Dr. David Nay­lor, Pres­i­dent of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to also expressed his enthu­si­asm at col­lab­o­rat­ing with TiE.  He said, “India is where the world is going.  With its strength in IT and com­mit­ment to pub­lic health, along with the vision of busi­ness lead­ers in the Indi­an Cab­i­net like Sam Pitro­da and Nan­dan Nilekani, India is posi­tioned to leapfrog many oth­er juris­dic­tions in the con­ver­gence of health­care, life sci­ences, and IT.”

Nay­lor, a for­mer Dean of Med­i­cine, also worked with the World Bank as a con­sul­tant to the Gov­ern­ment of India on urban health­care in the 1990s.

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About MARS

Head­quar­tered in Toron­to, Canada’s finance and tech­nol­o­gy cap­i­tal, MaRS offers advi­so­ry ser­vices, mar­ket intel­li­gence and entre­pre­neur­ship edu­ca­tion to more than 700 emerg­ing com­pa­nies in health care/life sci­ences, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and enter­tain­ment (ICE), clean­tech and social pur­pose busi­ness­es.

About Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to

With three cam­pus­es in the world’s most mul­ti­cul­tur­al urban region, and almost 500,000 alum­ni active in every cor­ner of the globe, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to has one of the strongest research and teach­ing fac­ul­ties in North Amer­i­ca.  Accord­ing to the 2011 QS peer review sur­vey, Toron­to is one of a hand­ful of uni­ver­si­ties world­wide with high glob­al stand­ing in all major dis­ci­plines, includ­ing com­put­er sci­ence and infor­ma­tion sys­tems (10^th), elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing (13^th), med­i­cine (12^th), and bio­log­i­cal sci­ences (12^th).

About TiE and TiE Cat­a­lyst Pro­gram

TiE Inc. (The Indus Entre­pre­neurs) is the world’s largest not-for-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion pro­mot­ing entre­pre­neur­ship, spread over 57 loca­tions across 14 coun­tries. TiE’s mis­sion to fos­ter entre­pre­neur­ship glob­al­ly through men­tor­ing, net­work­ing, and edu­ca­tion is deliv­ered by its 11,000 mem­bers world­wide.

About TiE Cat­a­lyst

TiE Glob­al Cat­a­lyst lever­ages the vir­tu­al vehi­cle to pro­vide access for TiE’s entre­pre­neur­ial com­mu­ni­ty across all 57 chap­ters to inno­va­tors and entre­pre­neurs at the inter­sec­tion of life sci­ences, health care and IT.  TiE Cat­a­lyst con­nect TiE’s large and very suc­cess­ful core of engi­neers and entre­pre­neurs with inno­va­tors in the health care field to lever­age their respec­tive areas lead­ing to new entre­pre­neur­ial oppor­tu­ni­ties and cre­ative solu­tions.