Founders Talk Series I

Family businesses contribute a staggering 70% of India’s GDP! However, with a young Indian demographic that is looking towards newer technologies and geographies, focus is on shifting from traditional businesses to technology enabled businesses that are global in nature. The younger work force brings in its own mindset, energy and drive to achieve impact, and the capability to respond well to challenges.

Indian Family Managed Businesses have started to transform themselves by implementing the culture of corporate entrepreneurship. The basic thesis of this session is to highlight:

Many of today's largest businesses were started during a crisis. How did they start? When did they start? What behavior traits and skills did they possess to succeed?
Launching a successful business is a challenging job - starting from coming up with a business idea by understanding one's own strengths, experiences, and expertise around and building a solution that is of value to a group of people or other companies.

Join this webinar with Dr. Bharat Damani who will bring forth examples and frameworks on how one could go about coming up with and evaluating business ideas in today's scenario, and how you can take it forward to launch a startup. Ask your questions during the session and if needed set up a follow-up conversation with Dr. Bharat to deep dive.

MSMEs contribute over 35% to India's GDP and is aspiring to contribute over 50% in the coming years. However, the pandemic has forcefully disrupted every industrial and manufacturing sector. The MSME sector has been under distress due to demonetisation and GST, and COVID-19 has aggravated the crisis for this sector further.

This disruption has compelled organizations to change and reinvent. An innovation expert, Dr. Aravind will share his thoughts on how companies can innovate and rise to the challenges posed by Covid-19. Moreover, he will bring his experience on how Covid-19 is transforming traditional manufacturing and industrial practices through the latest smart technologies or Industry 4.0.

Resilience means knowing how to cope in spite of setbacks, or barriers, or limited resources. Startup Founders have been put under tremendous pressure due to the uncertainty created by Covid-19. Covid-19 continues to challenge the emotional strength of the founders and not everyone is able to deal with it effectively. Dr. Ashwin, a serial entrepreneur, investor and author, will share how founders can build resilience. His latest venture - Manah Wellness focuses on mental health and has been helping many people overcome adversity in these difficult times. Join us to learn from his unique perspective!

Product Market Fit is key for any startup. It is always better for founders to have 1000 users use and love their product/solution than 1 million who use them intermittently. A product that is deeply loved is one that can scale. Understand the formula startups need to drive their business beyond the startup phase and achieve massive scale, a non-linear growth. Exponential growth requires financial investments, no matter whether you scale up a business or startup. This means that scaling up requires you to engage with Investors. Hear Sanjay Mehta speak on how to develop a Scale Up business plan for your startup.

Covid-19 has brought in a new reality to businesses in India and around the globe. With various countries and states employing different methods to balance the spread of Covid-19 vs. business continuity, digital transformation has become a major priority for business leaders today. In this session. Dr. Ganesh will share how leaders can build resilient businesses through digital transformation and how we have to re-think the economy, job creation and AI enabled personalised learning. This session is not one to miss!

Corporations have played a big role in helping India become the 3rd largest startup ecosystem in the world. Over the last few years, India has seen a plethora of large companies launch startup initiatives such as corporate startup accelerator programs, investment arms for making strategic investments in startups, or corporate connect programs to partner with startups. Leading the pack today is Reliance JioGenNext that has helped 100s of startups over the past few years.

Amey Mashelkar, Head of JioGenNext, will share his learning over the years on why large companies are interested in startups and what's in it for the startups. He will share what it takes for a startup to partner with large companies such as RIL and how Jio-GenNext has been making this a success for both RIL & Startups. Join us for a power-packed session!

While most investors today may not ask for a 'Business Plan', the process of business planning goes a long way in helping startup founders and corporate executives gain clarity on the why, what, and when - operational parts of the plan to build a successful business. Business plans are like road maps and also help in tracking progress over time. In this session. Advait will cover the following key aspects of a business plan:

• What and Why of a Business Plan
• How to develop your own Business Plan
• When do you need to update your Business Plan
• What are the common mistakes made while preparing your Business Plan

With the onset of COVID-19, an unprecedented pandemic which has laid out a challenging future ahead of us, there is a spiking need for improvisation and innovation. As entrepreneurs, we must be able to see opportunities in this current state of mayhem and now is the time to redefine and create what is coined as the 'new normal'. Popular industries like Travel & Tourism, Hospitality and non-essential Retail have taken a hit and many others have been deemed redundant. Entrepreneurs now need to identify new trends and niche markets within sectors, some of them being: Additive Manufacturing, Tele-Services, Edtech, FinTech, Healthtech, Logistics E-commerce, Mental health Guidance and counselling, Blockchain etc. It is imperative to make the most of this new found opportunity and bring forth innovative ideas to launch new-age start-ups. Contrary to popular notion, the need of the hour is not to think outside the box, but to think within, differently; there is no dearth of business ideas!

Media heavily focuses on exceptional people and their success stories. Rarely do we get to hear the failure journey of successful people. Vandana will talk about her extraordinary life: from a Radio DJ in London to a Chartered Accountant in Romania, and from a professional to a serial entrepreneur today. She will share her failures and successes in this session. She will cover lessons from mis-estimating the market need, time taken for product development, hiring the right people for the wrong reasons, and hiring the wrong people for the right reasons. Join us for a roller coaster ride!

Building a successful startup is more than just about creating a product or attracting investors. Research shows that start-ups by financially savvy entrepreneurs are more competitive and more resilient. Startup founders must know about the actual nuts and bolts of running a startup — things like financial models, taxation, compliance, cap table management, etc. that impact the valuation of a startup and also its longevity.

This talk will address crucial financial aspects to focus on and the pitfalls to avoid in building a financially successful startup.

While starting a new business is a big challenge, another equally difficult task is that of making a decision to sell your company. Those entrepreneurs who go through the process of preparing and executing the sale of a business for the first time will testify that it is not as straight forward as it may look like. Sagar Apte, founder of CarIQ, recently successfully exited his company with CarIQ being acquired by Varroc. In this session, Sagar will share his experience of building an IoT startup focused on the Indian market and the reasons behind the acquisition.

In the session, Sagar will share his experience on how entrepreneurs can prepare and become ready for acquisition and walk through a checklist that has helped him. Don't miss this opportunity to interact with a startup founder who has gone through the rigirous journey of building an IoT startup and asking questions on anything related to startup acquisition.

This talk will introduce what is Machine Learning and discuss applications to solving problems from different domains. It will showcase AlgoAnalytics work on analyzing Numerical, Text, Image, Audio and Video Data.

This session will specifically talk about how DATTUS (One of India’s top IoT startup focused on manufacturing and engineering sectors) started, key learnings with building products for the B2B market, customer loyalty, building high-performance teams and the exit process.