A new private community for women 'Elevate' and other key insights from Hans Tung, Kabeer Biswas, and more on Day 3 at TechSparks 2021
On offer at Day 3 of TechSparks 2021 were insightful conversations with key international startup ecosystem leaders, starting with GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Dunzo's Kabeer Biswas to Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director, NetApp, and more.
On offer at Day 3 of TechSparks 2021 were insightful conversations with key international startup ecosystem leaders, starting with GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Dunzo's Kabeer Biswas to Ravi Chhabria, Managing Director, NetApp, and more.
The day also witnessed the launch of YourStory's Elevate, a private community for mentoring emerging women leaders.
In case you missed it, here's all the top action from Day 3 of TechSparks 2021:
The next big billion opportunity
Building for the next billion customers is going to be a challenge for technology companies going ahead said Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital at TechSparks 2021.
He cited the example of Roblox, which allows users to play its 3D games, hang out in a virtual room, and create their own games — and said that the next billion customers will also be creators in their own right.
“It is fascinating to see young users who are so comfortable with mobile technology; it will be fascinating to see what they build,” he said, adding the next billion consumers of technology are younger, mobile native, want more choices, want things done faster, and to automate them.
Hans Tung
Elevate: Where CXOs mentor future women leaders
An invite-only platform launched at TechSparks 2021, YourStory's Elevate will connect a shortlisted cohort of high-performing mid-career women with CXOs across the startup ecosystem, with the aim to accelerate their path to leadership roles in 2-5 years.
Mentors for the first cohort include Ankiti Bose, Founder of , Aditya Ghosh, Board Member at and ,Varun Khaitan, Co-founder of , Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory; and Priya Mohan, investor with Venture Highway.
Getting things done the Dunzo way
Hyperlocal delivery platform is looking to raise “just adequate” capital of $150 million to deploy in the next 15-18 months to achieve one goal of making Indian cities a lot more convenient to stay in than any other global city, shared Kabeer Biswas, Co-founder & CEO, Dunzo, on Day 3 of TechSparks 2021.
Kabeer revealed that it will expand its fast grocery delivery service — Dunzo Daily — across India to deliver essentials to customers in 15-20 minutes.
“In the next 24 months, we will be rolling out the daily category across the country to 20 cities, and digitise this category for our TAM of 50 million customers. This should bring our GMV to $2-2.5 billion, 10X higher than $200-250 million we have today,” he said.
Kabeer Biswas
Maximising the value of data with cloud
The impact of cloud in terms of transforming businesses can no longer be overemphasised, said Ravi Chhabria, VP - Engineering and MD, NetApp India, and added that the cloud has impacted almost every industry and business and has opened opportunities to build new products and new businesses.
“And, at the core, if you look at what is enabling this technology transformation, it is data,” he added.
Ravi also observed that technologies have evolved to the point where businesses can apply exceptionally powerful algorithms on massive cloud infrastructure at large troves of data and create something of exceptional value.
Indian startups inspiring global opportunities
Building for Bharat is an opportunity in itself, said Rahul Garg, Founder and CEO of B2B marketplace , and added India is a potential $10 trillion economy by 2030. Rahul added it could be the gateway for Indian companies and startups to build for the world.
“It was fair when our ecosystem was in early stages and there was a need to be the X of India. In the last five years, our venture capital has also come to realise that there is a massive opportunity to build in India for problems that do not exist in countries we take as a proxy,” he said.
He added that while most of the consumer internet companies fall into the bucket, these adaptations for the Indian context were necessary. Going ahead, though there is an opportunity to build global leadership for something which started in India.
Rahul Garg
Tech reshaping education in small-town India
“I have seen the disparity between what small-town schools make available to students and what students from metros get. So actually, what began as personal resentment for me converted into a way of making an impact on this world,” said 's Sumeet Mehta on Day 3 of TechSparks 2021.
“The way we solved this problem was to first run schools ourselves, figure out the challenges - first-hand, then build an integrated system while running our own schools. Running our own schools would basically get us to just a maximum of 70 schools in our lifetime. However, India has 1.5 million schools," he said.
LEAD currently works with more than 2,000 schools and claims to serve more than eight lakhs students across the country with a focus on cities in two, three, and four geographies.
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Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta