MUMBAI: Mukesh Ambani is scouting for startups that may dovetail with his own plans for ecommerce and phone services in India. For that, he is willing to look as far as Israel and Silicon Valley in the US.GenNext Ventures, owned by his Reliance Industries, is talking to other venture capital firms and private equity investors in those countries and in the UK to pick out candidates, Managing Partner Vivek Rai Gupta said in an interview. The selected startups could use Reliance's network to gain access to a market that is now the biggest for Facebook after the US.“It can be a two-way street,“ said Gupta, who used to head the India operations of consulting firm AT Kearney until 2008. “It gives them an opportunity to come to a big market like India and for us, it is an opportunity to interface with the best new ideas from that country.“Startups are the latest in Ambani's gameplan as he readies his $13.6 billion high-speed 4G phone network across India, where Morgan Stanley predicts ecommerce sales will surge tenfold to $100 billion by 2020. GenNext, backed by the refining-to-retail conglomerate, is an “evergreen fund that will invest opportunistically“, Gupta said.“Big corporates can benefit from mentoring and supporting“ startups, said Kalpana Jain, Deloitte India's New Delhi-based senior director, adding they could take advantage of “synergies.“