Celebrating 15 years of YourStory’s flagship event, TechSparks 2024 was larger, grander, and star-studded.
India’s largest startup-tech event’s third and final day started on a high note with Shri Amitabh Kant, G20 Sherpa, Government of India, joining Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, in a virtual conversation.
“We have become the third best startup ecosystem; our aim is to be the world’s number one,” Kant told the audience, adding, “India will overtake the US to become the number #1 developer in the years to come.”
The former CEO of NITI Aayog emphasised the importance of building in newer sectors, like how entrepreneurs have in the space, geospatial, and semiconductor sectors.
Kant further shed light on steering transformative projects, the role of innovative governance, and shaping India’s future on the global stage. He said, “The big ticket thing is a Rs 24,000 crore fund of funds for the deep tech sector. India has a lot of capital, we need not depend on foreign capital. People need to take a little risk along with the venture capital firms in startups.”
Next, Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director of NVIDIA-Asia South, unpacked the remarkable journey of NVIDIA—a trailblazer in AI and high-performance computing. He said, “NVIDIA was built on a simple premise to solve the hard problems that general computers cannot solve.”
Following this insightful conversation on AI, we had Ananth Narayanan, Founder and CEO of Mensa Brands, who shared his playbook for building a brand from zero to Rs 100 crore. “Building a Rs 20 to Rs 30 crore fashion is not that difficult…Growing from Rs 20 crore to Rs 100 crore is; your product and repeat rates have to work for you,” he said.
He added, “You need very different skills to build offline. From Rs 100 crore to Rs 1,000 crore—you have to shift from push to pull, focusing on building a brand. The three key elements are product, ASP (Average Selling Price), and performance marketing so that you rank at the top of searches.”
The first half ended with Anil Agrawal, Member of the Competition Commission of India, explaining the regulatory frameworks, government policies, and industry practices shaping an equitable business environment in India, which encourages innovation, protects consumer interests, as well as promotes healthy competition across industries.
In a rather insightful chat, Shashank Kumar, Co-founder and CTO of Razorpay, offered the audience an insider look at one of India’s largest fintech company’s blueprints. Sharing the fintech’s secrets for success, Kumar said, “You have to say ‘no’ a lot! There are many distractions for young entrepreneurs. For us, we kept our focus on building a solid payments product for businesses.”
The final day of TechSparks 2024 was indeed star-studded with Kunal Bahl, Co-founder of Snapdeal and Titan Capital, gracing the stage to speak on India’s new era of growth—the shift of mindset from the ‘unicorn’ status to profitability and sustainable growth.
Bahl coined these new-age profitable startups as ‘Indicorns,’ explaining, “The benchmark should be in the currency of our country, not that of other countries…It’s time we abandon the concepts of unicorns and start creating Indicorns—profitable startups with Rs 100+ crore revenue, started in the last 15 years.”
The investors stepped in with a panel discussion on ‘Kal, aaj, aur kal’, where top investors—Ashutosh Sharma, Head of Growth Investments, India Asia, Prosus; and Mukul Arora, Co-Managing Partner, Elevation Capital; spilled the beans on investments, returns, and what it takes to success in the Indian market.
We ended the show with the poster boy of the Indian startup ecosystem—Bhavish Aggarwal, Founder of Ola Consumer, Ola Electric, and Ola Krutrim—who spoke about creating an ecosystem for the world. “India is a country of consequence. We form 20% of the world, and we matter to the world,” he said.
Other speakers for the day included Prashant Sachan, Founder and CEO of AppsForBharat; Amit Ramani, Founder and CEO of Awfis Space Solutions; Aditya Ruia, Co-founder of Beco; Mohit Khurana, Co-founder and CEO of Uni Seoul; Vikas D Nahar, Founder and CEO of Happilo; Kiyoko HASHIBA, Director of Global Promotion, Strategy Promotion Division Office for Startup and Global Financial City Strategy, Tokyo Metropolitan Government; and Srinivas Rao Mahankali, CEO of T-Hub, among others.
As the curtain draws on the 15th edition of TechSparks, catch all that happened in these three days here.
