President of India Steps into Encourage Startup Investment

President Pranab Mukherjee said “Studies have indicated that ninety percent of new ventures that don’t attract investors fail within three years.”

Pitch@RB was the first program by Rashtrapati Bhavan in partnership with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to provide a platform for innovators and potential startups to pitch their ideas to select angel investors and venture capitalists.

President Mukherjee continued, “Investors are often shy to fund innovation start-ups as they are not sure of their success. But one must understand that even though nine out of ten ventures that an investor may fund, may fail; still, the one venture that will succeed, will make good the loss incurred on the rest. Such are the rules of the game.

Our investors must have an eye for sifting the good ideas from the ordinary ones. They must have the risk taking ability and appetite to nurture innovative ideas into successful products and services. I am sure the investment community is up to the task to match the ingenuity and enterprise of our young innovators.”

IvyCap Ventures was a VC firm present that exchanged one such MoU. Vikram Gupta is founder and managing partner at IvyCap Ventures. “ftcash is already a part of our portfolio. We exchanged a MoU with ftcash to show our vested interest in continuing to invest in them. All the startups that signed MoU were already part of the respective investor’s portfolio.

Rashtrapathi Bhavan hopes to make Pitch@RB an annual event and this was a good start. For government encouragement to happen at the President’s level shows everyone exactly how important funding is to the success of Startup India.”

At a time everyone is worried about drying up capital, having the President’s seal of approval will mean much to the startups of India.

Dilip Chabria is cofounder of Axiom Research Labs Private Limited. Axiom is the parent company of Team Indus, the Indian team still in the running for the 30 million dollar Google Lunar Prize.

Dilip was also a participant at Pitch@RB. “I think it was an awesome initiative from Rashtrapathi Bhavan and it was a privilege to be a part of the event. It’s programs like these will keep creating investor interest in funding startups.

All the startups and entrepreneurs present at the event have done phenomenal work. In particular one gentlemen who had come up with a way to not only harvest the wheat but the chaff as well. It’s one of those simple thoughts executed very well so that in the future we can cut down on pollution by harvesting the leftovers.”

All in all, by the VC and entrepreneur reaction we vetted, the event was a success with 12 startups present signing MoUs worth 85 crores with investors in a show of promise and confidence to keep nurturing the startups of India.