Entrepreneur India 2018, Day 1: A Celebration of Creativity & Entrepreneurship Let's take you through the key highlights of Day 1 of 8th Annual Entrepreneur Show
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With the aim of helping budding young entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur India organized Entrepreneur 2018. The annual two-day event helps entrepreneurs to discover and unleash breakthrough ideas, innovations, and insights needed to realize their power to disrupt the social, economic and tech ecosystem.
For 8 years, Entrepreneur Annual Convention has been the premiere event that brings together inspiring entrepreneurs and investors for creating new opportunities for investment, build new partnerships and collaboration avenues and highlight entrepreneurship as means to address some of the most intractable social challenges.
Government's Role in The Startup Ecosystem
The event kicked off with Chief Guest C.R.Chaudhary, Hon'ble MoS for Commerce & Industry, GOI, Ritu Marya, Editor-in-Chief, Entrepreneur India and Manish Sisodia, Deputy CM, Delhi lighting the ceremonial lamp.
Later, Chaudhary held a plenary session on the role of the government in building entrepreneurship ecosystem. He also shared how startups which were earlier concentrated in places like Bengaluru, Delhi have now started moving to places like Rajasthan. And he further highlighted the initiatives and achievements of the government in building the startup ecosystem of India.
Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister & Cabinet Minister of Delhi delivered the next keynote session on how Delhi can be a catalyzer for creating new entrepreneurial hubs in India. He also emphasized that entrepreneurship is the only possibility for the development of the country. The third session was held by Jayesh Ranjan, Principal Secretary, Industries & Commerce and IT Departments, Government of Telangana spoke at length about the role of state leaders in supporting the startups.
Next up was another keynote session on Corporate- Government Connect by Nikhil Sahni, Group President, MNC- Corporate Banking, Government Banking & Strategic Government Advisory, YES BANK Ltd. The session was followed by Ravindra Shukla, Managing Director, Rajasthan Knowledge Corporation Limited sharing a ton of useful insight on the policy initiatives that help in entrepreneurial growth around the world.
Age No Bar!
Dreams have no age limit so never use your age as an excuse to escape from your passion. Neerja Birla, Founder, and Chairperson, Mpower echoed the similar thoughts in her keynote session. Neerja, who is known for her philanthropy activities, touched on the finer points of the topic "why age is no bar when it comes to entrepreneurship'.
"Age is no bar to follow your passion and success doesn't have a deadline, it has a timeline," she said.
Learn From the Experts:
The event also witnessed a gripping panel discussion on how startups can successfully raise a Series A funding. The panel was moderated by Arun Marc D'Silva, India Director of Frederique Constant and it comprised of entrepreneurs like Akshay Bhushan, Partner, Lightspeed India Partners, Pushkar Mukewar, Co-founder and Co-CEO, Drip Capital, Nirav Choksi, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, CredAble and Manish Rathi, CEO and Co-founder of RailYatri.
Learning from the Past: Sharing Experiences
In India, many entrepreneurs dream of expanding their business on an international scale. The global expansion presents huge opportunities for startups to sell their products and services to a broader market. Ritesh Agarwal, Founder & CEO, OYO Rooms shared his incredible experience of building a global presence. Agarwal also pointed out that Oyo Rooms is the largest growing market chain in a country like China.
In addition to this, Anand Ahuja, Founder, and CEO, Bhane delivered a compelling keynote session on creating and sustain a successful growth strategy.
Business turnarounds have become quite common phenomena for entrepreneurs, no longer they are special cases. The size of turnaround depends on the enormity of the trouble a company is going through. Infibeam Avenues President Jason Kothari's keynote address highlighted the role of money and investment in the startup's journey.
In the closing keynote session of the conference, Tushar Chhabra, CEO & Co-Founder, Cron Systems talked about the importance of regulatory hacking in building startups in a complex market.
The event also had parallel roundtable sessions on technologies like blockchain, AI, IoT, big data, AR and VR. The evening closed with the presentation of awards recognizing entrepreneurs across various industries. Among the few awardees were, Anand Ahuja, Founder, and CEO, Bhane,YES BANK MD & CEO Rana Kapoor, Stand-up comedian Amit Tandon and Keshav Bansal, Director of Intex Technologies. The huge gathering of guests cheered and applauded the awardees.
On receiving the award, Rana Kapoor, MD & CEO, YES BANK said, "I am extremely pleased to receive this prestigious award which is a testimony to India's new age entrepreneurial spirit driven by Design, Innovation and Creativity-led Entrepreneurship. With the right mix of innovative ideas, access to risk capital and large consumption demand, India is well positioned to emerge as the global hub for entrepreneurship & innovation ."
