Startup Ecosystem in Kolkata: A Strategy Discussion

Join us on Thursday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m. IST / 8 a.m. PDT for a special roundtable program: Brainstorming on Eastern India Startup Development. Come share your perspective, sign up to Speak and we will accommodate as many as possible with a few minutes to talk, register here. In case you missed it, you can listen to

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Putting the Freshworks IPO in Context (Part 3)

Broader Implications I have been watching with delight how the Indian startup ecosystem is celebrating the success of Freshworks.  Indian entrepreneurs have found their celebrity role model in Girish Mathrubootham.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashish Gupta of Helion Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Especially for companies coming out of India who sell using inside sales either into the large enterprises or SMB, the SMB market has a lot of headroom in terms of the next 5 to 15 years. That is a market where there is a lot of technology going in. It completely aligns with

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashish Gupta of Helion Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It is also an evolution. This was not the case some time back. Startups had a very hard time attracting talent. That has changed. It’s become sexy and cool to work for startups in India. That’s a very good development. Ashish Gupta: You’re absolutely right. Sexy is the word. In fact, I recently

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashish Gupta of Helion Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Springing off your comment about huge amounts of money coming into India, it’s all relative. Even when you started in about 2006, there was too much money and too few deals. At that time, the product entrepreneurship ecosystem was still very nascent. There weren’t really a lot of fundable deals. That is not

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ashish Gupta of Helion Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Ashish Gupta, Helion Ventures was recorded in May 2015.  Ashish Gupta, Co-Founder of Helion Ventures, one of the key players in India’s venture capital eco-system. If the topic interests you, this discussion is extremely

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Building a Retail Business in India: Manish Sharma, CEO of Printo (Part 7)

Sramana: What was your next step? Was your first store a proof of concept to raise more money? Manish Sharma: I had enough money to do something else, but not enough for an entirely new shop. I decided to put up a smaller shop inside a larger store. I clearly identified the demand and need

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Building a Retail Business in India: Manish Sharma, CEO of Printo (Part 6)

Sramana: Did you fund the business with just friends and family? Manish Sharma: I did have two angel investors when I started Printo. I met them at conferences and gave them a basic elevator pitch. I was looking to raise 2 crore rupees but ended up raising 1.4 crore rupees. I did not raise a

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