New Delhi, Jun 6 (IANS): Participants at an entrepreneurship programme here Sunday said that they are ready to shun their monthly pay cheque addiction to explore business ideas.

The ideas suggested by them ranged from free calls anywhere in India to a do-it-yourself kit to promote science education to speech recognition software for intelligence agencies.

"The success of the entrepreneurs in the IT industry in the last two decades has rekindled innovation among young Indians," said Saurabh Srivastava, co-founder of investor group Indian Angel Network (IAN), while kicking off the entrepreneurial conference.

"By nurturing these innovative ideas young professionals are becoming job providers rather than being job seekers," he added.

The biggest challenge for such entrepreneurs was lack of funding, therefore, nine out of 10 such ideas die even before taking off. IAN provides entrepreneurs funding and offers valuable feedback and mentoring.

According to Srivastava, who also serves on the prime minister's National Innovation Council, the Indian IT industry was a fine example of innovation that helped it grow from $60 million to $60 billion in just 20 years.

He expressed confidence that the industry now aspires to be the IT hub of the world by 2020 by achieving revenues of $245 billion much like China which aspires to be the manufacturing hub of the world.