Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Madras Discusses Entrepreneurship With Seasoned Magnates In Its First Ever Digital E-Summit

The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras Entrepreneurship Cell celebrated Women’s Day with a panel of industrial leaders and experts to highlight the impact of women in the Indian corporate and entrepreneurial spaces. To discuss the enormous potential of women in entrepreneurship, a moderator from E-Cell had an enlightening conversation with Varsha Tagare, MD at Qualcomm; Dipali Goenka, CEO and Jt. MD for Welspun India; and Ankita Vashishta, founder of Saha Funds, each trailblazers in their respective fields. The panel discussion was conducted under the Inspirit Lecture Series, in E-Cell’s flagship Entrepreneurship Summit 2021.

Presented by Westbridge Capital, co-sponsored by StartupTN and powered by the IIT Madras Batch of 1990, E-Summit ‘21 marked the beginning of the next phase in a series of ISO 9001:2015 certified entrepreneurial fests, one of a kind in India. 

Every year, the theme of the fest is chosen to reflect the spirit of an important point in a startup’s lifetime. This year’s theme is ‘Sustain to Attain’, stressing the necessity of resilience, preparation and calculated decision-making in order to sustain through the do-or-die pivoting moments in a startup’s journey, and overcome them. 

Women in Entrepreneurship

In 2019 funding raised by all-female founding teams in India in 2018 was an abysmal 0.63 percent of the total $13 billion raised by entrepreneurs in the ecosystem. This, despite women-led private companies achieving 35 percent higher returns on investment, and 56 percent higher revenue. Founders shared their experience of facing investor bias, sexist comments, and intrusive questions.

Even an apparently egalitarian medium such as Ai has developed gender biases. A recruiting engine developed by Amazon to review applicant resumes penalized women, inheriting a bias from data that was incredibly skewed towards male candidates. This alone indicates that gender discrimination is a systemic phenomena.

Vashishta’s SahaFunds is India’s first VC fund that specialises in women entrepreneurship, helping startups attain funding they are otherwise arbitrarily and unfairly denied. Vashishta confessed she was fortunate to avail opportunities in academia or work vis a vis other women, otherwise male dominated spaces. SahaFunds is powered by her vision to help other women attain these opportunities. ‘It was really important to increase the percentage amount of funding for women. it had to reach two digits.’ This, she said, will help women rise to leadership positions they duly merit.

Tagare said that the bulk of her experiences with discrimination were in college rather than at work places. The management was trained to treat them equal and not show any explicit biases. She welcomed the increase in the number of female enrollment into engineering and in technical jobs. 

Tagare highlighted the difficulty of balancing being a parent with her profession. She recalled her mother’s advice; if she managed to succeed here, everything else would be a breeze.

Goenka noted the importance of ethics and sustainability for an organization. She added that balance was important across the field – in identifying consumer requirements and meeting them with innovation. She explained that analytics was essential here, to predict where the world would be heading, and the company selling, in two months. Investments are important not only for the front-end, but the whole supply chain. 

‘Businesses are not just businesses, but agencies of change.’ With strengthening women in entrepreneurship, organisations must evaluate the impact they can bring, encouraging ambition and leadership in women employees. This meant emphasising on upskilling rather than hiring. She pointed towards Welspun’s Spun initiative, where women are employed to recycle rags into rugs and carpets – touching both women employment and self-sufficiency, and environment friendly enterprises. 

Unlike the other two, Goenka stepped into the business world after leading the life of a homemaker. But  despite being mostly unaware in the field of manufacturing technologies, a predominantly male dominated place, what kept her going was her willingness to learn and talk about anything set on the table. ‘Roll up your sleeves and be ready to learn’, she explained, ‘and you’ll love what you do.’

E-Summit 2020-21:

Previous Inspirit lectures saw talks by Groww co-founder Lalit Keshre; Rana Daggubati & Anthill Ventures’ Prasad Verma; Padma Shri Sanjeev Bikchandani; CEO and Co-Founder of Monk Entertainment; and Digital Content Creator Duo ‘Abhi & Niyu’.

Keshre said that it was futile to worry about the competition over the customer. ‘You don’t need to beat everyone else – life is not about RG. First build your product, build your brand.’ Keeping an ear to the ground, he explained, was essential.

An investment platform for first-time investors, Groww expanded through word-of-mouth and ‘crazy’ decisions informed by customer expectations. In 2018, responding to growing trends, Groww integrated direct mutual funds, although it endangered their bottom line. In 2019, people asked for stocks on the portal. In response, they applied for a license, opening 1 million demat accounts in 6 months. Stocks are now their best performing service. 

Similarly, he said, it was meaningless to care about domains or narratives while building products. ‘They are your worst enemies; well oiled principles that go on forever, till startups hit the scene. Most breakthroughs were made by outsiders. Take a contrarian belt, and if you are correct, you’ll make it big.’

Sanjeev Bikchandani, in his aptly named talk ‘Building Things That Last’, said that successful companies are built on deep consumer insight that dictates marketing strategy. ‘Your customer’s money is more important than the investor’s. If you provide the ends to an unsolved problem, you don’t need to sell your product. Customers will themselves buy it.’ 

He explained that the ability to sell across the table was essential for a startup’s success. ‘A primary requirement to succeed is being a great personal magnet for talent. Good salesmanship, honesty, empathy, and the ability to sell your vision. For all of this, you need enough knowledge and belief in what you are doing.’ 

Abhi, Niyu and Viraj spoke about how content creation has evolved in today’s social media driven world and the significant impact it has made during the COVID-19 lockdown, both the pros and the cons, in their talk named ‘Altering Paradigms: The Power of Content’.  As Abhi and Niyu rightly said, “Don’t believe in trends. Don’t wait for trends or anything. Just adapt to what is happening. Just stay motivated to create content that you truly believe in.” Adding to this, they also said, “Dont just ask your feedback when you have posted only one video. You have to be patient and put in hard work to create content and create content that you vibe with.”

Here, participants have been encouraged to tap into the Growth Conclave – a series of certificated workshops by industry experts to deliver necessary technical skills and business acumen for advancement in the new world, helping upskill oneself and one’s start up.

Workshops have covered topics such as Product Construct, KPI, Design Thinking, AI – ML and Cryptocurrencies; essential fields regardless of one’s place in their professional journey. The product management workshop covered new product development, from planning to rollout. Speakers gave valuable insights on prioritisation of features of a product using the MOSCOW and RICE models, building wireframes and user stories, and on responsibilities incurred in different stages of the product life cycle – introduction, growth and scaling, retention, and pivoting in decline. 

The Key Performance Indicators (KPI) workshop focused on data interpretation and inference – to be data informed rather than merely data driven. Essentially health-checkups, KPI’s function in accordance with the rule that you can only improve what you can measure. It covered the ways in which KPIs can be used for problem discovery. 

Design thinking is a strategy to create solutions based on problems. The workshops entailed finding human- and value-centered solutions, by observing and talking to people actually facing the problem and rephrasing solutions to their needs. The speakers stressed on the role of customer development in product development, especially in empathising with customer beliefs through every stage.

Future workshops will cover effective capital management, strategic planning, and more. 

Every year, E-Cell initiates a social campaign, broadening the scope of entrepreneurship in India. For 2020-21, the social campaign was Pankh – ‘Opting Vertical Over Horizontal’. Pankh focuses on Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), empowering them to build sustainable business models and is aimed at enabling the growth of Indian MSME ecosystem. E-Summit attendees can participate in events such as ‘StrategiZe,’ a policy-making competition run in association with the National Institute of MSME, Hyderabad; and the ‘MSME Showcase,’ where unique MSMEs like Rogan Art, Block Printing of Ajrakhpur, etc. will have stalls.

E-Summit 2021 is held from March 5 to 14. Passes can be purchased from the website, esummitiitm.org. Workshop and Lecture passes are sold separately.