When you have startups building solutions to what they think are problems, they may be right they may be wrong. But what if startups knew for sure what the global problems to solve were? 100 Open Startups is a program that presents its competing startups with global challenges already identified by conglomerates that run the world and have these same corporations pick the winning solutions.
Dr. Bruno Rondani is the founder and CEO of 100 Open Startups program. He is also the head of Inova Venture Partners and has been part of many successful startups so he knows what to look for in a startup.
Here’s what Dr. Bruno says about 100 Open Startups, what it does in India and how Indian startups can become a part of this global challenge competition.
What are the countries 100 Open Startups program is present?
We are currently running the Open Startups program in Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Peru, UK, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, US, and India.
What are the big companies involved globally?As of today there are 220 large corporations that are engaged in our platform as evaluators and these are from worldwide locations. 50 of these companies like 3M, IBM, Intel, Accenture, Dow Chemicals, HP, Shell were the founding members of this program in Brazil. We are in the process of forming similar founding members in India too.
So far what are the big companies to participate in the Indian chapter of 100 open startups?We have 30 plus companies that are engaged as evaluators on our platform. Some of them are 3M, Dow Chemicals, Accenture, IBM, Sabic, Aon Global, Wipro, Xerox, HP, Siemens, TCS, Onquest, Bosch, L’Oreal, HCL Technologies, Titan, and CGI Group.
Why was it decided to bring 100 open to India? 100 Open Startups fills an important need not only in India but worldwide. We provide two important value additions to strengthen the existing mentors, accelerators and incubators. These are:
1. Access to an international executives’ network
And
2. Global market access for the Indian startups
Who manages 100 Open in India? The 100 Open Startups program is managed by Dr. Bruno Rondani’s colleague at Induct AS in India. The Managing Director of this organisation as well as of 100 Open Startups in India is Mr. Varadarajan Krish (Varad for short)
How did you and Mr. Varad meet? Varad and I have been colleagues at Induct AS for the past 6 years. We had met previously at Global Strategy meetings of Induct in Oslo, Norway.
Induct AS is the company that launched its IPO on the Oslo Stock Exchange on Jan 13th this year. Though Varad and I met a few years back, the 100 Open Startups program was presented to all the Managing Directors from various countries, including Varad, for the first time after it became a successful movement in Latin America.
How many startups participated in total in the trial phase of 100 Open held in India for the first time?We invited about 30 startups from selected partners to subscribe to the corporate executives evaluation process and 14 startups were selected to participate in the first “Level 3” event of 100 Open Startups.
What sectors/industries did these startups represent?They were from Innovative Cities, Healthcare & Wellbeing, Information Society (AI and ML) , and Future of Education.
What were the top startups from this trial phase held in Bangalore? There were 4 Startups that qualified to “Level 4” event next year. These are Inovise in Healthcare; Ikarus in AI and ML; Kfx in high speed transfer; and Neerassure in Water Management for households and industry.
Inovise was voted the no. 1 startup in our program and will represent India at “Level 4” event in Brazil in February, 2017.
How do startups become part of 100 Open? Any application to fill out? Any rewards?Startups have to apply at the link provided at
www.openstartups.in. For the first “Level 3” event on 10th Sept. in Bangalore, the first prize winner gets return flight ticket to participate at the Level 4 event. But 100 Open Startups is not a competition [in that sense], it is an evaluation and matchmaking platform for startups to connect with corporates. The startups with more matches and contracts signed are ranked in the 100 Open Startup’s TOP100.
BW Reporters
Regina is a reporter for BW Businessworld. In her previous assignments, she has worked with Independent television Network as a news anchor and reporter in Sri Lanka
