The TiE Global summit was held on November 14th and 15th in New Delhi India.
Just to give you some background, TiE stands for The IndUS Entrepreneurs, a Silicon Valley-based, not-for-profit founded in 1992 to help startups network and also facilitate fundraising. TiE currently has 60 chapters in 17 countries and has helped create businesses worth more than $75 billion.
The TiE summit was one of the flagship events and had participation from across various sectors from all the countries where they are present (probably more).
The talks were extremely deep, and the panelists were subject matter experts. All in all, it was a 2-day intellectual ride. With multiple sessions going on in parallel, it was extremely tough to pick and choose the sessions to attend.
In this article, I would like to share some notes from important sessions which I hope you will find useful and help you on your entrepreneurial journey.
Jaspreet Singh – Founder and CEO, Dhruva Inc (Dhruva is a unicorn company, working in the data protection segment on the cloud.
- Its ok to pivot right after you raise funds.
- You need to have some people in Sales who are making good money, they should be leveraged to coach other salespeople.
- Proper Dashboards should be present for the Sales teams in order to be aware of how others are performing + how far are you away from your target.
- In a product-based company where you are scaling, relationship-based selling is challenging as it is not scalable.
- Getting US government agencies using your product is very much possible – Dhruva has had NASA as their client for a long time.
Asha Jadeja Motwani – Founder, Motwani Jadeja Foundation (The Motwani Foundation plays an extremely important role in fostering entrepreneurship, more details can be found on their website.
- One should look at Social impact funds for fundraising as these could be easier to get.
- The Government and Startup India should not interfere with IT companies.
Shiv Khera – Renown author, motivational speaker.
The following are needed to make you successful
- Physical Strength
- Financial Strength
- Mental Strength
- Emotional Strength
- Spiritual Strength
Harsh Jain – Cofounder and CEO, Dream 11
- It took NO from 150 investors to actually raise money
- Use the No – to improve your product.
- If you are looking at funds to sustain your business, then you might not be working on the best business model
- Funds should only be raised once you have created a successful business and would like to scale.
- Peer-based reviews are important and should be done quarterly. If an employee scores less than a certain score thrice, they should be let go.
- If you have great growth in your domestic market, then there is no need to venture into any other market just for the sake of it.
Arvind Singhal – Chairperson, Technopark Advisors (He was the chair for a panel – Scaling up – Shifting gears & Avoiding Potholes, some of the points are also from the speakers)
- If a business has not been able to figure out its core value proposition in 5 years, then it probably never will.
- Firing is tough, but you need to realize that your work will not stop after you fire that person.
Amitabh Kant – CEO of Niti Aayog
- The amount of data that will be created through the Aadhar/UPI and others will be available as public datasets for people to work on.
Kunal Bahl – CEO of Snapdeal
- Focus and Discipline are extremely important, a startup does not have to multiple things, it just must do a few things, and that too really well.
- When you have something new to add to the pipeline, do ensure that you see what you need to remove from your plate.
- Snapdeal recorded its highest-ever revenue during this period!
Anand Virmani – Co-Founder, Nao Spirits & Beverages
- Less is more – In terms of Social media and presence. We let our customers do the talking.
Aanchal Saini – Co-Founder and CEO, Rent it Bae
- The offline model is as important (if not more), as the online model – an extremely important point as we have seen many debates around the same topic
- A change in the mindset is definitely possible
Sanjeev Bhikhchandani – CEO, Info Edge
- When Naukri was started, there was no choice but to make it profitable from the beginning.
- Out of the money that was raised (many years after the company was formed and was running successfully), some amount was still kept unspent in the bank and inside the founder’s head, it was always treated like a debt.
- The core team of Naukri sees a very low attrition number.
Dinesh Agarwal – CEO, Indiamart
- The complete journey has been extremely enjoyable
- Like Naukri, Indiamart was profitable really early
- Hockey stick kind of graph seen around 2015 when profits increased
- Indiamart never spent any money on advertising. It relied on SEO.
- They did not need all the money that they raised. They also treated the money raised at debt.
These are just some of the highlights of the event. There were networking lunches as well as many existing products/services/companies on display at the event.
Fundraising pitches from Angel to Series A were being held.
Too much to write as an article.
If you would like to know more about the event or would like to discuss the above notes, feel free to get in touch with me at contactus@dignitasdigital.com