CALL it a dot.com revival, a throwback to the late 1990s, when Web start-ups were mushrooming everywhere.

More than 200 such outfits have popped up lately, up from just a handful just three years ago, estimates a group called Entrepreneur27 (e27).

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e27 should know; it manages Web start-ups here by arranging networking sessions and industry events for them. It also helps the National University of Singapore (NUS) Entrepreneurship Centre identify promising start-ups to fund.

Start-ups here are getting innovative too, creating new technology tools or Web services - from virtual stock market games to social networking for businesses, to Facebook games.

A study commissioned by the Media Development Authority (MDA) said Web 2.0 businesses - those in second-generation interactive Web activities such as blogging and social networking - are the fastest growing here.

This creativity is paying off too, with the sector's revenue leaping 44 per cent, the study found out.

One reason, industry observers say, lies in the availability of seed funding. About 120 of these infant companies are getting MDA support.

But another factor seems to be at play in a nation often criticised for its lack of innovation: the education system. Students are now being exposed to the idea of engineering their own start-ups.

Take Mr Vinod Nair, for example. After graduating from NUS with a computing degree in 2007, he set up a company to build a Web-search tool for home buyers to find the best home loans.

As an undergraduate, he attended an NUS programme in Silicon Valley, the birthplace of tech start-ups, and interned for a year with a start-up there. He said: 'Classes are too theoretical, you learn nothing.'

Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times