Fostering entrepreneurship, the TiE way
“Innovation is the key to solve the world’s toughest challenges, whether it is stopping a pandemic, avoiding a climate disaster or just raising human productivity,” affirmed Bill Gates, Microsoft founder & philanthropist. “But innovators cannot make it on their own, they need supporters and partners to make sure that their best ideas make it from the labs to the marketplace. For over 27 years, The indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) has been doing just that”. Gates was speaking at a virtual global summit, on the occasion of his being given the Life-time Achievement Award by TiE. “You support great entrepreneurs around the world and in some of the most important fields in technology today. Your work is essential in fostering innovation and creating the better world we all want,” he added.
TiE Global was the largest entrepreneurship summit, a three-day virtual event, organised by TiE Hyderabad and inaugurated by Venkaiah Naidu, Vice-President, India. The yearly mega-event was scheduled to be held in Dubai, but it had to go virtual, due to the present pandemic situation. “Initiatives like the TiE Global summit add strength to the youthful nation’s entrepreneurial energy,” said Prime Minister Modi, in a message sent on the occasion.
Vice-President Naidu emphasised that fostering student-entrepreneurship through innovation programmes is critical and universities need to establish close linkage with industries to mentor and hand-hold students with novel business ideas. He appealed to the corporate sector to come forward to fund and promote an entrepreneurial ecosystem on the university campuses, as youth comprise about 65 per cent of India’s population, he reminded.
The world’s largest entrepreneurship summit was based on the theme Entrepreneurship 360 and focussed on issues faced and challenged by entrepreneurs, while providing a platform for funding, insights into strategies to grow and scale business. The conference was attended by delegates from 40 countries across the world. There were 40,000 registrations, 50 per cent of which was from start-ups. Delegates including government agencies, angel investors, venture capitalist, global industry leaders, Nobel laureates, policy makers and TiE members from global chapters attended the virtual conference.
The 50 star speakers in the summit included John Chambers, Ronnie Kohan, Arvind Kejriwal, Amitabh Kant, Jesse Draper, Narayana Murthy, Gautam Adani, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Rohini Nilekani, Vineet Nayar, Tim Draper and Sheryl Sandberg. Also present on the occasion were President, Mauritius; President, Costa Rica; Nobel laureates, such as Abhijit Banerjee and Mohammad Yunus, who also addressed the audience.
“India has grown as a technology country,” claimed Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog, while speaking in the session: Transformation of India with a focus on entrepreneur ecosystem. “It has the world’s second-largest start-up ecosystem. While the world was reeling under the Covid pandemic, India was witnessing $38 billion flowing in as FDI.”
Arvind Kejriwal, chief minister, Delhi, informed that his government was in an advance stage of rolling out a new start-up policy and turning India’s capital into a new global start-up destination. He also spoke about various fronts on which the government is working to leverage technology for the benefit of India’s 1.3 billion people. While the solutions will benefit the nation immensely, it will also guide 4-5 million people who will be moving over from poverty to middle class, he argued.
“TiE has been helping entrepreneurs solving the problems the society is confronted with,” contended Mahavir Pratap Sharma, chairman, TiE Global Board of Trustees. “It has been working with all sectors of the industry and all stakeholders, including women and students. Now, it is even reaching out to the underprivileged.”
“TiE is a wonderful organisation,” concurred Abhishek Rungta, founder of the Kolkata-based Indus Net Technology and past president, TiE, Kolkata. “It is a gift to the community in its lonely journey of entrepreneurship. A mentoring session of TiE in 2001 had changed my company’s fortune.”
Sridhar Pinnapureddy, president, TiE Hyderabad, informed that, “TiE Global Summit is the eighth in the series. It is the conference of the next generation of thinkers and dreamers. TiE will help them in harnessing new technology. The summit will help its participants to get 10 times more benefits than a pre-Covid summit would have done.”
TiE, was founded in 1992 in the Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives and senior professionals, with roots in the Indus region. TiE Global, is a not for profit organisation dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship around the world and has 15,000 members in 61 chapters across 14 countries.