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Are you an aspiring entrepreneur? Do you have an out of the box idea and you feel this could be huge? Do want to be featured as one of the ‘Top entrepreneurs of India‘? Then, here is your biggest opportunity as Kuberan’s House, a first and one of its kind platform dedicated to the start-up industry; has recently announced the extension of the registration date for one of its biggest entrepreneurship-themed show till 31st January, 2021.

This step was taken to ensure that there is maximum participation across India, especially from Tier 2 and Tier 3 areas. As of now, over 16,000 participants have registered with the maximum entries coming from Delhi-NCR, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Telangana regions. So, if you feel you have an idea that could be a game-changer, then all you need to do is just log onto Kuberan’s House and apply with your idea.

With this show, you have the golden chance to make your start-up dream come true and transform your idea of having your own business into reality. The application process is open to all the ideators, entrepreneurs, aspiring business tycoons, from all the sectors and industries that have innovative business ideas. There are no season winners on the show. In fact every Entrepreneur will be a winner who will get an investment from the best panel of investors and venture capitalists.

The show is segregated into multiple stages. After the first round, the top 500 applicants will be selected and each of them will be awarded the Kuberan’s House fellowship. The second round will have 100 participants that will be selected after another filtering process who will then be part of a Holistic workshop. This workshop will be with the best domain experts from across India. The participants will also receive various perks and value adds for building their start-ups.

Post the workshop and one-on-one mentoring by the KH team, the final 60 startups would be selected to be a part of India’s biggest start-up reality show. A special in-house team of domain experts, business valuators, chartered accountants, etc. has been formed for the screening process. It will be undertaken by the professionals from some of the prestigious institutes across India like IIT Kharagpur E-cell, Bits Pilani Technology Business Incubator, Ent. IISC, TiE Hyderabad, VIT, 100 Open Startups, Rabvik Innovations, Telangana State Innovation Cell, NASSCOM 10,000 Startups just to name a few.

9XV plays an integral role in this stage as it provides training, mentoring, defining and evaluating business model, network support, incubation, and acceleration services. The final 60 startups  will be decided post a thorough screening process which is a three-stage filtering process inclusive of checks of the background, tech specs, financial investment, business model, innovation, and the feasibility of the pitched idea by the participants.

To apply and pitch your idea, please log onto Kuberan’s House website

About Kuberan’s House

Kuberan’s House, a first-of-its-kind platform to source, streamline and showcase innovative start-up ideas from across India will help entrepreneurs especially from tier 2 & tier 3 towns connect to the best investors from across the country, converting most of them into successful business ventures.

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Horses Stable, India’s first-ever business-based show that empowers young entrepreneurs to raise funding for their business associates with a Mumbai-based VC firm ah! Ventures [earlier coverage here]. The show format allows participating entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to a panel of renowned investors a.k.a Horses and persuade them to invest in their startups.

Horses Stable aims to be a global funding platform to motivate and give wings to the dreams of ambitious entrepreneurs. To accelerate the vision, Horses Stable has collaborated with ah! Ventures to magnify its capabilities of accommodating participants on a larger scale. The VC firm will help the show unveil unprecedented opportunities with its network of over 62,000 entrepreneurs and 3,000+ global investors.

As a part of the partnership, ah! Ventures will curate the registration process of Horses Stable Season 1 to spread the word and invite enormous participation while welcoming a new set of Investors and Deal Masters. Registrations will be open from September 1st to 25th 2020 on both the portals.

Commenting on the partnership, Prashant Agarwal, Co-Founder – Horses Stable, stated

I believe collaborative culture is a powerful tool to create a competitive edge. The credibility of the new platform is multiplied to manifolds when produced together by two expert and experienced entities. Hopefully, Horses Stable Season 1 powered by ah! Ventures is going to be an example of one such platform.

Amit Kumar, Partner, ah! Ventures added

We are very excited to join hands with HS and believe that the show will provide a big boost to entrepreneurs and add the X-factor to the world’s 3rd largest startup ecosystem. The passion of the HS team fueled by our experience will surely make Season 1 a big hit.

Horses Stable Season 1 will potentially be a common ground for entrepreneurs and investors to connect and work together to expand their business and profitability. Along with generating funding, entrepreneurs will get an enriching experience to meet prominent names of the industry.

Heating the excitement, Horses Stable will be announcing the launch of their pitch season on one of the prominent OTT platforms in India. However, the team is yet to reveal the details, so stay tuned.

About Horses Stable

Horses Stable is a flagship web series of Singapore-India based media house Horses Productions Pvt. Ltd. Based on business-oriented content, the web series offers first of its kind platform to aspiring entrepreneurs and investors to connect and grow together. It is a platform where aspiring entrepreneurs pitch their business model to a panel of investors and persuade them to invest money in their business. The startup aims to help businesses find the ideal investor and open up exciting opportunities for investors too. For more information, please visit Horses Stable.

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Metamorphosis, an ed-tech company has announced the launch of their ambitious project – Metamorphosis School Of Entrepreneurship [MSE] – World’s First Virtual School for Entrepreneurship at middle and high school level. Students from 12+ cities from across the country have enrolled in the first cohort of Metamorphosis School of Entrepreneurship and the platform is planning to empower 1 million students by the end of year 2020.

MSE is a virtual, dynamic, practicalistic school of entrepreneurship with expertly curated content for the 6-12th grade students. It is a two-year long case-study based program and the entire curriculum comprises 3 divisions i.e Meta Core, Meta Electives, and Meta X.

On the launch of the virtual entrepreneurship school, Pavan Allena, Founder & CEO of Metamorphosis Edu said

We have always been dedicated towards our goal of creating a healthy startup ecosystem in the country. MSE is our next big step in the same direction and through the program we are trying to inculcate the nuts & bolts of Entrepreneurship among the middle and high school students.

Youth is the future of any nation and our prime focus at Metamorphosis Edu is to nourish and empower these seedlings so that they grow up into big Entrepreneurial success.

The MSE program takes students on an entrepreneurial journey [from idea generation to new venture creation] by imbibing the 21st century skill sets, idea pitching opportunities, b-plan competitions and many more.

Each and every student works up their way as an entrepreneur under the guidance of 50+ mentors [who are real-time entrepreneurs] and personal proctors. The next cohort of Metamorphosis School of Entrepreneurship will start from October 1, 2020.

Till date, Metamorphosis Edu has empowered 15000+ students across the country. The company is also responsible for 45 success stories of student entrepreneurs who have launched their ventures that have garnered accolades and market traction.

About Metamorphosis Edu

Metamorphosis is the world’s first virtual school that teaches entrepreneurship to high school students.  It strives to make students job creators instead of job seekers. The company was founded in 2017 by Pavan Allena when he felt the need to empower young minds with entrepreneur skills and guide them on a path of leadership and innovation.

The company began with a physical business model which quickly evolved into a mix between a physical and digital model. As a result of using digital technologies, the company has been growing exponentially. Between 2017 till 2019, Metamorphosis grew five-folds. For more information, please visit here.

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Western Digital, a leading worldwide data infrastructure provider, has announced Data Innovation Bazaar  2020 [DIB 2020] to support and encourage a vibrant entrepreneurial sector in India. Data Innovation Bazaar 2020 will closely engage with the ecosystem to promote data driven solutions for industries like healthcare, education, financial inclusion, energy & environment, agriculture, smart transportation and smart cities.

Since its inception in 2016, Startup India has now over 25,000 registered startups across the country [Source]. Breakthroughs in technology and accessible funding has ensured rapid growth in the startup ecosystem; however, in order to help further scale the industry and address key issues of national importance, Data Innovation Bazaar was conceptualized by Western Digital. The powerful and unique forum will showcase data led ideas that address the key society and national needs and transform the nation.

This edition of Data Innovation Bazaar is being hosted in partnership with Startup India and Invest India, and knowledge partners – Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology [MeitY], Department of Science & Technology – Ministry of Science & Technology [DST] and The Indus Entrepreneurs [TiE, Delhi].

Deepak Bagla, Managing Director & CEO, Invest India, said

We are pleased to continue our engagement and encourage India’s startup ecosystem to scale with Data Innovation Bazaar. With Western Digital’s vision of driving innovation with data, we can touch base with data-driven startups and encourage them to scale further.

Invest India has played a vital role in strengthening the ecosystem and these collaborations help achieve the next wave of innovation. Being one of the largest entrepreneurship platforms in India, our large community of stakeholders enables young entrepreneurs to network and cultivate their growth.

Siva Sivaram, President, Technology & Strategy, Western Digital, said,

At Western Digital, we are committed to driving innovation and transforming the data industry across the globe. Data lives in every aspect of our lives and it’s our imperative to help leverage it to build a better tomorrow. Through the second edition of Data Innovation Bazaar, we aim to encourage the startup ecosystem to help build data-centric solutions, and also play a role in the continued growth of India’s economy.

Supria Dhanda, Country Manager & Vice President, Western Digital India, said

Western Digital has long been at the forefront of game changing innovation and we believe in enabling those who dare to think big about the possibilities of data. Through the Data Innovation Bazaar initiative, we will empower the next wave of innovative startups that will address real-time challenges. Partnerships with the Government and leading Industry Bodies coupled with our own technology expertise will give these innovators the boost needed to take their powerful ideas to greater levels.

Data Innovation Bazaar 2020 is open to young entrepreneurs, startups, innovators and students. This edition will focus on three themes across sectors:

  • Data for Social Transformation for the healthcare, education, financial inclusion and energy & environment industry
  • Innovative Data-Intensive Commercial & Industrial Applications for the agriculture and logistics industry
  • Connected World Solutions with Data as the Fuel for smart cities, smart videos, connected homes & offices and next generation connected transportation

As part of Phase I of Data Innovation Bazaar 2020, the online application process is open until March 15, 2020 on the Startup India portal. 40 teams will be shortlisted for Phase II where they will showcase and present their ideas. All the shortlisted teams for Data Innovation Bazaar will be given TiE membership. The final winners will be given awards totalling up to Rs. 22 Lakhs.

For women entrepreneurs, there is a special prize money of Rs. 2 Lakhs. Additionally, the top 10 teams will be invited to Western Digital’s Innovation Boot Camp at the company’s Bengaluru campus to learn, scale and engage with experts in the industry, academia, investors and Western Digital leadership.

The previous edition of Data Innovation Bazaar focused on education, renewable energy, healthcare, transportation & mobility, and clean-tech for which over 520 applications were received. Western Digital’s partnership with Government of India’s – Startup India and Invest India, provides an opportunity for the development of an ecosystem for emerging entrepreneurs and brings together government alliances, businesses and innovators on a unique forum.

Learn more about Data Innovation Bazaar here.

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Entering its 16th edition, Conquest has successfully become one of India’s leading Startup Accelerator, enabling more than 1000 startups to succeed every year. One ideology that has remained constant throughout the years is to reform every other one in order to provide the most topical and relevant support to the startups in accordance with the ever-changing dynamics of today’s ecosystem.

Assimilating learnings from various revamped models and experiences from the ecosystem, backed by Accel, Conquest 2020 will be divided into 3 phases. It will commence with Multi-city mentoring sessions in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

Conquest will further go on to provide the top 15 most exciting startups of India with extremely vigorous 6-week long online mentorship from some of the best entrepreneurs and field experts out there. This will be followed by a 10-day Accelerator Program in Bangalore consisting of investment workshops by firms like Accel Partners and Blume Ventures and networking sessions with successful founders and prominent CEOs from across the country.

All of this culminating with a Grand Event, being attended by all the top pioneers from the ecosystem, giving Conquest’s shortlisted startups a platform to pitch their work in front of them and an array of Investment Firms. All set with this year’s edition, Conquest is on a path to empower founders from across the country.

Last year, Venture Catalyst had pledged 20 Crore for every startup that registered for Conquest, which met their criteria of investment. With investors like Dev Khare from Lightspeed, Shanti Mohan from LetsVenture, Sanjay Nath from Blume and Barath Shankar from Accel, coupled with mentors like Suvonil Chatterjee from Ola Cabs, Abhishek Nayak from Accel and Anuj Rathi from Swiggy, Conquest serves as a networking paradise for every startup out there.

In the past, Conquest has had success stories like SocialCops, which is acclaimed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and has been recognized as the Most Impactful Startup of 2017 by YourStory. One of our recent finalists, Trell, raised $4 million and is now valued at $19 million. XWards, another finalist, has received Rs. 8 crores of funding recently. Do check our coverage of Conquest 2019.

Mayank Singh, CEO Conquest, co-Leading it with Kartikeya Gupta, says

While building Conquest, we wanted to give anyone with the passion to create solutions and build big businesses a platform to grow. In 16 years since its inception, we have come very close to holding all the cards which propel them to the top, and every year is a step forward to realizing that vision. At Conquest, we believe in nurturing the startup ecosystem with the best of knowledge and resources to steer their journey to the top.

Overview of Conquest 2020

Conquest strives to build a platform aimed to bring together all stakeholders from the ecosystem and create an impact with its utmost capacity.

The following are the various initiatives to help founders succeed in their quest.

  • Online Mentorship Program – Conquest connects the Top 10 Startups with industry stalwarts from all over the country, enabling them to grow remotely while they continue to learn and work.
  • Accelerator Program – With a goal to help the best founders build great businesses, Conquest provides a 10-day long accelerator program in Bangalore. Fueled by the belief that multiple founders tackling similar problems in close proximity would lead to efficient solutions, Conquest provides all its startups with Co-Working and Co-Living Facilities. Every day is a huge leap forward for the founders with investment workshops, fundraising pitches, networking with successful founders and much more.
  • Grand Finale – The Grand Finale serves as the perfect platform for the Top 10 startups to pitch before Top Investors and Media houses for a prize money of INR 5 Lakhs.
  • Conquest Academy – A one-stop-shop of localized content for Indian startups. Whether you need help in acquiring your first 100 customers or in designing the perfect UI for your app, Conquest Academy ensures that you don’t have to go through tons of foreign resources.

Conquest has opened registrations, embark on your journey at www.conquest.org.in. To know more about Conquest, check out their blog Conquest 2020: Make Ideas Happen

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In its efforts to enable the startup ecosystem in Tier 2 cities across the country, Microsoft’s ‘Highway to a Hundred Unicorns’ has selected 54 startups from Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Kerala and Telangana. The top tech startups selected through ‘Emerge-X’ win Azure credits and a host of business and tech benefits.

The competition has received over 530 applications and the top three startups from each state gain access to a year-long mentorship program and a two-day founder bootcamp.

Highway to a Hundred Unicorns, the Microsoft for Startups initiative, works closely with local governments to strengthen the startup ecosystem in each state. The fifth edition of the outreach program was hosted at Hyderabad in association with the Government of Telangana. More than 150 innovators and entrepreneurs engaged with Microsoft experts, industry stalwarts and ecosystem stakeholders, including members of the state government.

More than 650 startups that have participated in the five events have benefited from the mentorship and guidance through technology workshops on Azure, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Over 75 ecosystem players including the Global Entrepreneurship Network, TiE, Headstart, NASSCOM, and Startup Grind as well as prominent investors, entrepreneurs and executives in the national startup ecosystem have actively engaged with the innovators at each of the locations.

Telangana Emerge X Winners with [L-R] – Lathika Pai, Jayesh Ranjan, Gayle Sheppard, and Rajiv Kumar

Wholesalebox and Rapidor are among the participating startups in the program that have received recent fresh funding from one of the participating investors.

Lathika Pai, Country Head, Microsoft for Startups – MENA and SAARC, said

The entrepreneurial energy of startups is rising well beyond the known metropolitan hubs and is remarkably high in Tier 2 cities, despite the obvious challenges. Through Highway to a Hundred Unicorns, we have been able to reach some highly promising innovators from each of the five states. In the next phase of our journey, we look forward to engaging with more startups and accelerating their growth and providing them with Microsoft’s platform to go global.

Microsoft for Startups is committed to helping entrepreneurs build and scale their companies, by leveraging the cloud platform, enterprise sales team and partner ecosystem. Through its cutting edge technology expertise, strong focus on Microsoft for Startups, a growing partner ecosystem, and the venture fund M12, Microsoft is uniquely positioned to help startups evolve from being market ready to enterprise ready.

Emerge X Winners

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Five years ago, MoEngage was an idea in the minds of founders Raviteja Dodda and Yashwant Kumar; a design to transform user experience and help internet companies retain customers. Today, the startup counts five of the Fortune 500 brands as its customers along with internet biggies such as OYO, Gaana, Tokopedia, and Traveloka among several others.

Image Source

Here’s the story of MoEngage – APAC’s fastest-growing customer engagement and analytics platform.

Raviteja Dodda and Yashwant Kumar, both alumni of IIT – Kharagpur, having co-founded DelightCircle app – a leading offers network in India, had first-hand experienced the profits of using technology to engage and retain users. They joined hands to build a prototype in early 2014. The product was ready six months later with a few customers willing to try out. Among other things, the cloud-based product created a unified view of the users’ multi-point interactions with a brand and start using this data to personalize communication with these users.

Today, MoEngage has emerged a purpose-built mobile marketing platform suitable for enterprises in Asia, the U.S., and Europe. Over 50% of the company’s revenue now comes from enterprise clients – an indication of the widespread adoption and maturity of the product. The company grew 200% in the last financial year and is now targeting a revenue of $25MM by 2020. It has raised $14.5 million in funding from marquee investors – Matrix Partners, Ventureast, Helion VC, and Exfinity Ventures. More importantly, the company today has over 500 clients in over 35 countries.

MoEngage is a company who planned to reach $25mn in 2020.Unlike most saas startups who focus on established categories like CRM, ERP, Cloud, etc. MoEngage decided to start off as a cross-channel customer engagement platform by creating a category itself. The business & Marketing operations was focused to initiate a product-feature led growth model primarily targeting enterprise as a category whereas others target SMBs. Asia and SEA markets were chosen for business operations vs companies who typically target the West for such growth.

MoEngage was also recently included in the 2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms – for the second time in a row and believes it (inclusion) is a validation of its image as a complete marketing automation platform for digital enterprises. It is also the only mobile marketing platform from APAC to have featured in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for two consecutive years.

As the company marks its fifth anniversary, Raviteja Dodda, CEO and Co-founder, MoEngage, says

Building a global business requires a relentless focus on the product and the people. We have created a company that is driven by values that encourage freedom, ownership, and leadership. The results of which, is seen in the traction for our product and the positive feedback from our customers. The company is 200+ strong and has offices in  Bengaluru, Jakarta, London, Berlin, and San Fransisco.

MoEngage’s phenomenal five-year journey is also a strong counter to those who claim B2B businesses can’t be built in India and to those who typically focus B2B selling toward the West. “We developed an East-first approach to our product. Large consumer base who are increasingly getting on the internet to get things done, rapid adoption of smartphones, its unique technology & cultural challenges, and rise in disposable income made East a perfect fit for our product,” said Raviteja Dodda, Co-founder and CEO, MoEngage.

The customer continues to be at the heart of MoEngage’s growth. Case in point, MoEngage Sherpa, a set of machine-learning algorithms that auto-optimizes the content and timing of the messages delivered to users. This saves MoEngage customers countless hours and dollars spent on experimenting with marketing campaigns. Another example is the proprietary Push Amplification Platform.

It effectively solves a problem marketers all over the world have been grappling with, high failure rates on push notification delivery. Recently, MoEngage consolidated its customer-focused approach with yet another thought-leading product, Dynamic Product Messaging. DPM enables companies to make highly personalized recommendations to their customers, dramatically transforming the user experience.

About the future, this is what Raviteja has to say

It’s gratifying to know that we have been able to register such strong growth and establish a strong brand identity in these last five years, merely on the strength of our superior technology and relentless focus on customers. We want to continue doing that and work towards our vision of creating the world’s most trusted marketing cloud out of India.

About MoEngage

MoEngage is an intelligent customer engagement platform, built for the mobile-first world. With AI-powered automation, optimization capabilities, and in-built analytics MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at scale across multiple channels like mobile push, email, in-app, web push, On-site messages, and SMS. Fortune 500 brands across 35+ countries such as McAfee, Samsung, Hearst, and Deutsche Telekom use MoEngage to orchestrate their omnichannel campaigns. MoEngage has been featured on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant and is the youngest company on the list.  For more information, please visit MoEngage.

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As India continues to take swift steps towards digitalization, fuelled by policy reforms, technological innovation and digital transformation, India’s start-up ecosystem is looking at the threshold of the next wave of growth by leveraging new technological innovations. The National Association of Software and Services Companies [NASSCOM], launched their report on the Indian Tech Start-up Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s, at the side-lines of the of the 16th Anniversary Edition of NASSCOM Product Conclave 2019.The report has been commissioned along with Zinnov.

Adding over 1300+ start-ups in 2019, India continues to reinforce its position as the third largest start-up ecosystem across the world, taking the total number of tech start-ups to 8900-9300 in the last five years.

According to the report, investment in start-ups were steady with USD 4.4Bn in Jan to Sep 2019 across 450 start-ups at a 5% year on year growth trajectory. Funding saw a huge spike at the early stages [Series A, B] as well, with USD 1.6Bn being recorded at 70% YoY growth. The trend witnessed over the year was that start-ups are driving focus more towards the B2B space and almost half of the country’s start-ups are offering enterprise focused services.

India also witnessed the addition of 7 Unicorns in 2019 till Aug, taking the total tally up to 24, which is the third highest number of Unicorns in a single country in the world. Among the new unicorns, it was commendable to see that sectors such as gaming, SCM & logistics and automotive are receiving the recognition they deserve. There are also over 50 potential unicorns in the country at present that have received cumulative funding > USD 50 Mn; pool grew 3X over last year with 35 new additions in 2019.

Speaking on the occasion, Ms. Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM, said

The start-up landscape in the country is becoming the epitome of innovation, with companies bringing out solutions that are aimed at solving locally relevant issues. However, to simulate innovation, government and corporates need to focus on increasing their role as prominent stakeholders playing the part of venture capitalists and providing the appropriate market access, funding, and guidance to seed stage start-ups.

Today, India stands at a very exciting threshold, with the advent of several new technologies, newer avenues have opened. Deep-tech is no longer a mere conversation, but is already seen as a tangible, exciting prospect, enriching lives and enhancing the potential for innovation. There has been a rapid growth in the number of deep-tech start-ups as well as start-ups focusing on the underserved markets.

Increase in internet penetration, better infrastructure for digital transactions and the Indian government’s push towards digital inclusion have evangelized start-ups. Entrepreneurs are now focusing on creating solutions using deep-tech such as artificial intelligence, analytics, augmented reality/virtual reality, blockchain and internet of things, among others.

Over 18% of all start-ups are now leveraging deep-tech, which means there are over 1600 such companies in India. This number constituted only 8% of start-ups incepted in 2014 and has seen a 40% CAGR over the past five years.

Ms. Debjani Ghosh further added

Indian start-up ecosystem has definitely come a long way in providing a level playing field for innovators to flourish by strengthening capabilities and fostering co-creation. The next wave of growth will be at the junction of convergence of technologies, where different sectors will embrace digital to re-define their operations.

The country has over 335 active incubators and accelerators with a capacity to enable over 5000 start-ups every year. More than 65% share of incubators and accelerator programs were added in the last five years, out of which 57% are active outside Tier 1 cities.  The robust start-up ecosystem of India is at a cumulative valuation of USD 95-101Bn and has given rise to 390,000 – 430,000 direct jobs with over 60,000 jobs in 2019 alone.

NASSCOM aims to accelerate this ecosystem significantly by 2025. This entails increasing the number of unicorns to 95-105 potentially and the cumulative valuation to USD 350-390Bn. The target is to also achieve 1100-1250k direct jobs in the start-up ecosystem by 2025. This can be done by improving certain capabilities in proving institutional support at the early stages, so start-ups can tap global markets as well as local markets with ease in public procurement norms and processes.

NASSCOM also recommends building sector specific initiatives such as global centres of excellence [or innovation clusters] for each industry along with industry-specific physical and digital sandboxes. Another area that requires attention is increased corporate and equity investor participation at pre-seed and seed stages; expansion of CSR guidelines to increase capital availability and encouraging the establishment of corporate innovation labs. NASSCOM will continue its drive towards catalysing emerging tech start-ups, build category leaders and support them to create not only for India but also scale up and solve for the world.