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TiECon Pune 2019: Conclave aims to solve core business issues
The gathering was organised by the Pune chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a non-profit global community that seeks to encourage and mentor entrepreneurship
TiECon Pune 2019, largest annual gathering of entrepreneurs, startup founders and venture capitalists in the city, took off on Friday with deep dive sessions on business validation, from sales to scale, design thinking and funding, to help the entrepreneurial community clarify and address many of the problems they face while establishing their businesses.
The gathering was organised by the Pune chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), a non-profit global community that seeks to encourage and mentor entrepreneurship. At least 300 people attended the gathering on Friday.
The two-day event at Westin hotel began with a six parallel deep dive sessions — on funding by Vikas Kumar, co-founder and CTO, Loantap Financial Technologies and Jeetendra Tanna, founder Eternus Solutions; validating your business by Ravi Nigam, former managing director, Tasty Bite Eatables Ltd and Satish Dhupdale, CTO, AlgoAnalytics; organising sales to grow by Kiran Deshpande, co-founder Mojo Networks and Abhijit Ghosh, chief executive officer UGRO Capital Ltd; scaling up by Anand Deshpande, chief executive officer Persistent Systems and Ashok Korwar, management consulting growth catalyst; design thinking by Shahsank Deshpande, co-founder Clarice Technologies and Ashwini Deshpande, founder of Elephant Design Pvt Ltd and branding by Sunil Agarwal, Brand Architect and Transformation Speaker.
Each session was held for 90 minutes wherein entrepreneurs got deep insights into the subject.
Deshpande and Korwar, who conducted the scaling up session, highlighted the importance of growth for every organisation. Citing the example of his own company Persistent Systems, Deshpande said, “When we started in the 90s, things were going great and our net profit was 40 per cent. I was happy, but then my colleagues asked me what’s in it for them. That’s when I realised that I have to work hard for the growth of the organisation so that there is something for everyone.”
The open session on networking ran to a full house. Vandana Saxena, Serial Entrepreneur & Advisor and Deepak Thombre, founder Dalmia Refractories Ltd conducted the session and highlighted the importance of networking in business.
Saxena said, “Don’t build networks, but build people ecosystems. People ecosystems are strong systems where you help others and others help you, regardless of what is happening in business. Most people are scared of networking because they don’t know what to do and don’t know how to strike up meaningful conversations.”
She added, “There are two rules of networking, the first one is to have a strong introduction and the second is to have a strong bank of questions so that whoever you meet, you can ask something relevant and learn something. This also helps you get remembered. Your introduction has to be memorable.”
Ayaz Memon, senior sports writer, conducted a session on organisation building- learning from sports. The evening ended with Kiran Rao sharing her experiences and learnings from the non-governmental organisation (NGO) –Paani, which she co-founded with her husband Aamir Khan.
