We Need to Give Back to Society: Dr. Ashwathnarayan C N Tells Budding Entrepreneurs The Minister for Higher Education; IT & BT, Science & Technology; Skill Development, Entrepreneurship & Livelihood, former Deputy Chief Minister, Government of Karnataka, was speaking at LetsVenture's flagship event, LetsIgnite, in Bangalore on Friday
By S Shanthi
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"Technology has become the core foundation of learning and the government is trying to be futuristic and trying to improvise to keep up with the space. Innovation cannot be limited to labs," said Dr. Ashwathnarayan C N, Minister for Higher Education; IT & BT, Science & Technology; Skill Development, Entrepreneurship & Livelihood, former Deputy Chief Minister, Government of Karnataka, while speaking at LetsVenture's flagship event, LetsIgnite, in Bangalore on Friday.
"The reforms our government has been bringing are transforming the society. It is creating an ecosystem where all of you can build a better future. The ecosystem is fantastic for all of you to make your dreams come true. At the same time, there are some challenges like priorities, culture etc and we need to work on that. All of us need to work together to build a better society," the minister advised the budding startup entrepreneurs present at the event.
During the event, LetsVenture launched Scalix, a SaaS marketplace exclusively for founders to solve the operational inefficiencies that impact a founder's ability to focus on their core business and a weekly subscription product called Compass to document trends and analysis of the private market. It also announced a joint investment of up to $ 100K along with MeitY Startup Hub under the SAMRIDH Scheme to enhance the landscape of investment in early-stage startups.
Inaugurating Scalix, Dr. Ashwathnarayan C N, said, "Like how we in the government have strived for 'single window clearance', Scalix is striving for a 'single window for startup'."
LetsVenture is an early-stage investment platform for startup investors and founders and is backed by Accel, Chiratae Ventures, Nandan Nilekani, Ratan Tata, Rishad Premji, Mohandas Pai, Sharad Sharma, and Anupam Mittal.
"The reason why I invest in startups is that public markets don't work for me. I thought about what my strengths are. I have startups reaching out to me and I knew this is where I had to be," said Anupam Mittal, founder and CEO, People Group.
Talking about taking the right investment decision, he said, "In the last few years, funding has become more intuitive and instinctive. However, because of funding winter, its more structured today. Having said that, instinct will always play a role." Mittal, who has been angel investing since 2007, added.
LetsVenture was started in 2013 and has raised over $110 million for more than 500 startups, and its portfolio is valued at $8 billion. The platform has more than 12,000 investors from 60 countries. "Creating and delivering value to founders is at the core of how we design our products and services. Having worked with so many founders, what we saw was that there was a common set of challenges every founder faced, and the same questions kept coming up in most conversations - be it at starting up, or after starting up. Founder NPS lies at the core of our business flywheel and we believe that LetsVenture is naturally best positioned to deliver this. Scalix is the product that will deliver this vision," added Shanti Mohan, co-founder and CEO of LetsVenture.
