Aditya Birla Group would soon allow employees to take time off for pursuing their entrepreneurial ideas

Looks like Aditya Birla group is all set to tap the entrepreneurial ideas of its employees, which is why it has planned to roll out an intrapreneurship programme soon, which is called Innolabs. Under the programme, the company will allow its staff to take time off from work to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions.

In August last year, the group had also started Aditya Birla Bizlabs, which was its programme to collaborate with start-ups in the retail, financial services and telecom businesses. The group has a dominant presence in these sectors. Out of the 1,200 start-ups that applied for the programme, 20 were selected to "scale up".

"When we were doing all of this (Bizlabs) for startups outside, our employees joining us from IITs and IIMs started asking: what is there in it for us? So, we have started working on something for our employees called Aditya Birla Innolabs," Umesh Adhikary, president, corporate strategy and business development, Aditya Birla Group told ET.

"If your idea is great and we see conviction and passion in you, we are going to help you create a company of your own. At the same time, we are going to give you a six-month or one-year sabbatical where you are going to go, develop the product, create your own team... and in case you fail, you can come and join back," added Adhikary.

"We are forging partnerships with Nasscom 10,000 startups, Microsoft Ventures, Techstars, 500 startups," said Adhikary, who added that the group would prefer to work with slightly older startups which are looking at geographic expansion.

Similarly, RIL has set up GenNext Innovation Hub, which is a start-up accelerator programme running in partnership with Microsoft Ventures.

"It's a healthy development," says Sharad Sharma, cofounder of iSPIRT, commenting on Birla's move. "It's a playbook that Indian conglomerates have companies from tech companies globally and it's a proven one," he adds.

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