Qualcomm Inc. announced its second annual international venture investment competition in India to identify early-stage wireless technology companies.

The Qualcomm Ventures QPrize competition is open to entrepreneurs in North America, Europe, China, South Korea, Israel and India and will provide up to US$750,000 in total seed funding to help entrepreneurs transform their innovative business plans into reality. 

“The Indian market has significant potential to contribute to innovations in the wireless domain. With QPrize, we are able to identify promising early-stage companies and provide financing that helps them commercialize their products more quickly,” said Karthee Madasamy, director of India Investments for Qualcomm Ventures. “The diversity and uniqueness of new ideas we witnessed during QPrize last year was truly exciting and we look forward to seeing more novel business ideas emerge this year.”

Kanwalinder Singh, president, Qualcomm India and South Asia and senior vice president, Qualcomm, said, “It is Qualcomm’s mission to foster innovation and advance the use of mobile technologies for the benefit of people and businesses worldwide.  Initiatives such as QPrize enable us to spot breakthrough ideas at early stages, and help them grow by providing mentorship, investment support and exposure to the global wireless ecosystem.  We look forward to encouraging participation from Indian entrepreneurs in QPrize this year, and to helping them transform their innovative ideas into commercial reality to accelerate the growth of the wireless industry.”

Globally, Qualcomm has teamed with DEMO to give QPrize finalists additional exposure within the venture community.  QPrize finalists will be invited to DEMO Spring 2011 in California, USA where they will compete for the grand prize and receive an exhibit in the DEMO pavilion.  The grand prize winner will also receive stage time to present their technology to an audience of venture investors, news reporters, bloggers and other DEMO attendees.

 The deadline for business plan submissions is December 14, 2010.  From the pool of competing entries, Qualcomm Ventures will select up to six finalists from the six contest markets. Thefinalists will each receive US$100,000 (€100,000 in Europe) of convertible note funding from Qualcomm.  The grand prize winner will receive an additional US$150,000 of convertible note funding, for a total prize of US$250,000 in venture financing.