TiE Hyderabad organizes SmashUp event to promote early stage startups

TiE Hyderabad organized its flagship event ‘SmashUp’ on January 17, 2015 at Taj Deccan, Banjara Hills,  for early age start-ups to enable them to learn the art of building successful ventures from eminent mentors and inspirational successful entrepreneurs. These early stage Startups also got the opportunity to network with the investors including angels and VCs.

The Key Note was delivered by Mr. Suresh Reddy, Chairman & CEO, Lycos Internet Ltd. (formerly Ybrant Digital) followed by Mr. R. Siva Kumar, Founder, Chairman & MD, Zetatek Industries. The day-long event organized interesting sessions on various topics related to the issues that startups face in its early stages. The event also witnessed the startups participating in a couple of panel discussions by eminent experts. The first, session ‘Go to Market for the first 100 customers’ discussed about evolving market strategies to win customers and was moderated by Mr. Surya Rao, Managing Director, Technology Business Incubator – BITS Pilani, Hyderabad; the panelists of this session included Mr. Krishna Lakhamsani, Mumbai Angles & Founder iPay, Mr. Raju Vanapala, Founder – W2Sms and Mr. Amit Prasad, Founder – SatNav Technologies all of whom shared helpful insights with the participants. Another session on ‘Design thinking for winning markets’ deliberated on designing products with customer-centric thinking to get the right connect with customers and markets. The panelists included Mr. Ripul Kumar, Founder- Kern Communications, Mr. Raghu Batina of Startup Advisor and Mr. Ram Gollamudi, Co-Founder, Edutor. The session was moderated by Mr. Dheeraj Batra, Business Designer, Dlabs – ISB.

The highlight of the event was the ‘Startup Heroes’ – an early stage start-up seed funding session where 10 Startups having a working prototype pitched to angel investors. These start-ups were given just ‘5 minutes’ to pitch to individual investors for a funding of INR 10 Lacs for tech start-ups and INR 25 lacs for non-tech (manufacturing or capital intensive) startups against 8% equity. [V1] At the end of each presentation, the investors talked about their interest in giving principle approval on funding the business idea of the Startup. However, in case, they didn’t find the business idea interesting enough then they provided their feedback on the missing items which didn’t excite them to fund the idea. The organizers shared and clarified the terms with investors and start-ups before the start of the event without leaving any scope of negotiations on the stage. Startup Heroes was organized in partnership with Hyderabad Angels.

Commenting on the success of the event, Mr. Safir Adeni, President – TiE Hyderabad and Managing Partner of Ineda Venture Group said, “TiE’s SmashUp event has been continuously nurturing the early stage startups to move up in the value chain. Through a platform like ‘StartUp Heroes’, we aim to not only mentor these start-ups but also connect them to the investor community. TiE Hyderabad will continue to bring together all stakeholders and play a proactive part in creating an inclusive ecosystem to promote entrepreneurship culture.”

The event witnessed a participation of around 250 people representing various stakeholders of the ecosystem including Startups, entrepreneurs, etc.