Balaji Telefilms' creative director Ekta Kapoor's must be finding it difficult finding cupboard space going by the number of awards she has been collecting. Kapoor added another to the list when she was awarded the Ernst & Young (E&Y) Entrepreneur Of The Year (EOY) award for 2001 at a high-profile ceremony in Mumbai yesterday which had minister for information and broadcasting Sushma Swaraj and a host of industrialists and government officials in attendance.
Kapoor is the first woman entrepreneur to receive the coveted E&Y Startup Entrepreneur Of The Year award in India. 

The main award of the night - Entrepreneur Of The Year - went to the promoter-chairman of Hero Honda, Brijmohan Lall Munjal. Yogesh Deveshwar, chairman of tobacco major ITC, won the Manager Entrepreneur Of The Year. 

Jamshed J Irani, former managing director of Tata Steel, received a lifetime achievement award, while the four industry-category awards went to Suresh Krishna of Sundaram Fasteners (manufacturing), Prathap C Reddy of Apollo Hospitals (services), Jerry Rao of Mphasis BFL (information technology, communications and entertainment) and Anji Reddy of Dr Reddy's Laboratories (healthcare and life sciences). 

The recipients were selected by a six-member jury, headed by Rahul Bajaj, chairman two-wheeler major Bajaj Auto. 

The Ernst & Young EOY Programme was first established in the United States in 1986 and is now conducted in over 20 countries. The awards came to India in 1999.