Panel Discussion: The First Step Towards Starting Up
IEEE Brainwaves came up with its first event of the year, A Panel discussion on ‘How to create a start-up’ on 24th January, 2018.
India has witnessed a major start up revolution in the past decade; there has been a greater emphasis on pushing the youth towards creating innovative start-ups. The discussion aimed at igniting young minds to be Change makers of tomorrow.
The discussion was curated by Prof. Mayur Parulekar and involved, Hiloni Punatar (Co-founder,Think Digital), Osborne Saldanha(Associate, Tuscon Ventures), Sumit Ranka(Founder, Thinkpot; Co-founder, Innov8), Ranveer Allahabadia (Founder, BeerBiceps). The discussion addressed different aspects of building a start-up like content creation, marketing, finance etc., with each panelist giving their insight into the intricacies of binding together these aspects in order to work towards a successful start-up.
Mr. Ranveer Allahabadia addressed how his interest in fitness led him on to YouTube, where he aimed at addressing the lack of content for the Indian audiences. He stressed at the importance of putting up quality and original content on YouTube to stand out from the crowd and also talked about the need to adapt and re-invent oneself with the ever changing needs of the viewers to reach more and more screens.
The discussion then moved forward with Ms. Hiloni Punatar reminiscing about how her involvement in College festivals led her into the world of marketing from an IT background. From doing Engineering in Information Technology to Marketing Management from Harvard University, she talked as to how important it was to explore other interests while one is still in college, because had it not been for her involvement in college festivals she may not have realized her interest for Marketing.
Mr. Sumit Ranka, a Harvard and an IIM alumnus addressed how he got into the world of start-ups, how important it is to understand the needs of the market and find solutions. Something of this sort led him to into his first venture, Innov8, a co-working space provider, the idea of which germinated from how productivity takes a hit when the working environment doesn’t seem welcoming enough to the employee. He further went on about how the experience he got through his first venture allowed him to maneuver past pitfalls he had faced during hus second venture,Thinkpot.
One can have all the ideas in the world, but unless an investor looks at your venture as a cash cow, it’ll be a very difficult to exude confidence, this is where Mr. Osborne came in, being a Venture Capitalist himself he pointed out as to how an investor looks at a potential company or a start-up with an objective view, but at the same time accepting how each venture has to be evaluated on its merit and how there can’t be just a single way of deciding which is the right venture to get into.
This interaction was followed by a Q&A session where the attendees put forth their queries to the Panelists.
