BRICS Chamber of Commerce & Industry in association with Start-Up India, a government of India initiative and Rising Bharat, a platform to encourage the startup ecosystem in India through mentorship and funding, organised the first BRICS CCI Startup Series event. The event commenced on 5 February 2021 at the Hyatt Regency, New Delhi.
With an aim to support and encourage young entrepreneurs, it gave an opportunity to 15 startups to present their pitches to the jury. The event is the brainchild of BRICS CCI vice chairman Sameep Shastri. The final startups were selected from a pool of over 250 startups who sent their pitches to the Chamber.
The panel of jury included Sameep Shastri; Avi Mittal, CEO & MD, Golden Ace Ventures; Akshay Aggarwal, Founder, Kafila Forge; Bibin Babu, Board Member, Innowork, BlocSpaze, Payiza; Dhruv Khanna, Co-Founder, Triton Foodworks; Pratham Mittal, Founder, Neta App; Dr Vinay Agrawal, Chancellor, ISBM University; Ruhail Ranjan, MD, Chandrika Power; and Aditi Banerjee, Co-Founder & CEO, Magic Billion.
Dr Neha Prakash (IAS), Special Secretary, IT & Electronics, Govt. Of UP; Sameep Shastri; Dr BBL Madhukar, DG, BRICS CCI; Ashok Kumar Singh and Jitin Bhasin, CEO, Savein; and Rana Sarkar joined as distinguished guests and esteemed speakers.
As part of the startup series, BRICS undertook a three-month process to identify budding startups which had novel ideas and drive to lead a change but required the investment, exposure and an added push for them to continue in their endeavour, lead innovations and pave the path towards Aatmanirbhar Bharat.
Speaking about the vision of the program and how it gradually evolved, Sameep said, “The initial thought-process began from 2016 as our Prime Minister has pushed towards startups, Aatmanirbhar Bharat is an ideology that we have been following. Being a young country, we have innovative minds and jugaad. The right platform was missing. What we are trying to do here is get the successfully settled young entrepreneurs who are in the top list of Forbes, they are all part of the chamber now and are not just ready to put in the funds but mentor the upcoming innovations and startups. This is the basic idea. We have tied up with one of my other initiatives Rising Bharat where we took it to tier 2 and tier 3 cities and funded more than 700 startups. I have continuously been associated with the startup community and what we have realised is mentoring is crucial. Everyone is able to acquire financial funding but the right kind of mentorship with the right kind of team is missing. This was the gap that we identified and this is how the entire program evolved. In future, we would like to have at least four more rounds in 2021. India is chairing BRICS this year so we are planning to make the best of it and give it the right platform, a global platform.”
Neha expressed, “I would like to congratulate BRICS CCI for providing us with this platform to connect with the potential startups and entrepreneurs and to connect them with the potential investors. This is a noble vision. India is very conducive to the growth of startups because of our demographic, open economic culture and the psyche of jugaad, that is the impromptu innovation which is deeply embedded in the Indian psyche. As India provides this potential for the growth of startups, it is with this vision that BRICS CCI has organised this event to bring us all together and to further promote and nurture the budding entrepreneurs.”
When asked about his experience as one of the jury members, Ruhail said, “With the vision of our Prime Minister, the startups are moving out. In 2014, the environment was not so conducive. Now, he has given us a few rules which are very easy on startups. I am looking forward to the next few years which is going to a very good growth story for India. With these startups, we are looking to handhold and mentor them. They have good ideas but need mentoring. When we started, we had no mentoring, nobody to go to, no knowledge about where to get money from, and the market was struggling. We want them to focus on growth rather than struggle. We want to incubate them and take them forward.”
Dr Vinay shared, “Entrepreneurs like these are young minds. I always say that they are like damp clay. The way we shape it, the way we mentor them will help them to nurture themselves and their businesses. These people coming out of nowhere, having creative minds and beautiful ideas, can be nurtured and mentored in a way that their startups can grow into multi-billion-dollar organisations. For that, we heard several pitches today and made many investment commitments. The overall experience was wonderful. This is just the start and we will have many more events like these where young entrepreneurs can come and pitch their ideas.” Jitin emphasised the need for proper mentorship to the budding entrepreneurs is as equally important as fundraising. He also congratulated the Chamber for its initiative.