CII Delhi Annual Session and Business Conference: Partnerships are the future of Indian enterprise

Last month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked Indian industry to partner with start-ups and use their solutions in developing products. She sought to know from the captains of Indian industry to give ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas on what could act as a catalyst to boost investment.

Sitharaman, at the CII post-budget interaction with CEOs on February 7, 2023, said that “working together with start-ups for products… or for technology requirements is the need of the hour and you should now unhesitatingly partner to get that benefit.”

According to a data collated by Moneycontrol through Tracxn Technologies, in February 2023, India’s start-up, the third largest in the world only saw 91 deals worth $1.32 billion as against 308 deals worth $4.77 billion in the same month in 2022. The data, according to news reports, was released on February 28.

On the same day the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), held its annual session and business conference: Leveraging Technology Towards Realizing Vision 2047–Sustainability, Competitiveness, Growth, and Inclusiveness in the Capital. The event’s co-associate sponsor was Apeejay Stya Svran Group.

Speaking at the at the inaugural session of CII Delhi Annual Business Conference 2022-23 H.E Shri Vinai Kumar Saxena, Lt Governor of Delhi said that he has been seeking to foster participatory role for every segment of society on the path to change the face of Delhi and the industry (CII) has had a big role to play.

“I have been told that this is the biggest annual conference that solely focuses on Delhi. Therefore, to my mind, this should be the ideal forum for a dialogue that involves collective participation of the industry in partnering with the Government. It is good to see that the theme of CII Delhi is Leveraging Technology Towards Realizing Vision 2047-Sustainability, Competitiveness, Growth, and Inclusiveness. This theme is apt keeping in mind the challenges as well as opportunities of Delhi. I would like to underline the challenges that the Delhi-NCR faces and request all of you (CII) to harness and embrace technology to address these,” Saxena said.

The second session of the day was on: Start -ups and Corporate Connect: The New Wave of Indian Enterprise. This session was chaired by Rohan Verma, Vice-Chairman, CII Delhi and Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, Mappls MapmyIndia (CE. Info Systems Limited). The key panelists were: Rikant Pitti, Co-founder, EaseMyTrip; Naresh Priyadarshi, CEO, IIIT-Delhi Innovation & Incubation Center; Jyoti Prakash Gadia, Managing Director, Resurgent India Limited, and Vaibhav Kaushik, Co-founder-CEO, Nawgati.

Talking about the collaboration of start-ups with concerned corporations, Verma said that partnerships are the future of Indian enterprise. “Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for the Indian industry, economy, and society as a whole to come together from corporate funding, and resources where start-ups can benefit to stay ahead of disruptions and competitors. This will also give access to new technology, growth of digitisation in the last years and the need to innovate has put the spotlight on such partnerships,” Verma said.

Priyadarshi, sharing his views on how corporates are working and supporting start-ups in the ecosystem which in turn is fueling the innovation for the Indian enterprises, said that corporations have been helping the ecosystem-related innovations, start-ups and R&D. “With all the good work that has already been done, we have a long way to go. Given the potential that we have today, the growth is extremely miniscule. Over the years, we have been talking about how the three stakeholders — government, industry and academia — have not been able to work together in order to solve real market challenges. But start-ups have been living examples that these do have a common component where the start-ups are coming out of young talented students,” Priyadarshi said.

These people are being mentored by the faculty to provide the subject-matter expertise. The help that has come from the corporates is to give them a platform to roll the ideas and how they can be brought to the market. Both these stakeholders have been given inputs to the government and the policies are being modified over the years, Priyadarshi said.

“But a lot more needs to be done which is where the help from the Indian industry is needed. IIIT Delhi is one of the younger universities created by the Delhi government. The first batch came out in 2012. IIIT-Delhi Innovation & Incubation Center is the Section 8 Company promoted by IIIT Delhi, and was provided seed fund the Delhi government in 2017, and we have been supported by DST, MeitY and DSIIDC. We have a space of 20,000 sq feet. The real value that is coming out is the mentoring by the 80 faculty and business mentors who are constantly in touch with the start-ups. We also provide connect with external investors as well as our own funding support. To give one data point, we have made an investment of Rs 35 lakh in start-ups; this amount is very small but the estimated value over the last 18 months has been in range of Rs 27 crore on basis of additional funds raised by them,” Priyadarshi elaborated.

Pitti, giving a little background on the start-up industry in India, said that there are approximately 77,000 start-ups which have come up in the last few years and the growth of the start-ups has been growing consistently. “Out of these, 122 are set to become the unicorns (any start-up that reaches the valuation of $1 billion). India has the world’s largest population and has the talent to have many more such unicorns. We have the ideas to solve real-life problems. The start-ups and corporate partnership embraces complimentary specs for both. Start-ups have the agility and the ability to help the corporates to be volatile in today’s world; the corporates in turn help the start-ups in times of crisis,” Pitti opined.

Gadia, talking about his journey in the corporate, finance and start-up world said that having a start-up comes up with plenty of learning curves. “At the present, 200 banks have been using a software that our company created for financial institutes. The challenge for me was to ensure that the IT person working on the software would understand the financial side of the business. My company was interested in getting this done and that is how my start-up journey began,” Gadia said.

Kaushik, who was seen in Shark Tank Season 2 sharing his journey said that he would want giant fuel companies to view his company as a doctor and come to him to solve any and all tech-related problems. “As engineers, we want to be their single point of contact for technology. Being part of CII has helped in terms of corporate connect and even with the government. We (Nawgati) also did a pilot project with the Delhi Transport Department – No PUC, No Petrol,” Kaushik said.

A few key points were highlighted at the end of the session. First, patience and resilience are a must. Several start-ups are failing because the youth are looking at making quick money and are looking for glory which is not the mindset required for a successful start-up. Most young people have the talent but don’t know what problem to solve. This is where the corporates can step in and help mentor them. Take an example. Between IIT-Delhi and IIIT-Delhi and other engineering institutions in Delhi, six hackathons were done in the last year. Around 62 brilliant ideas were selected. But we could only get support from the corporates for four.

“Second, there is tons of data and several real problems, but not the support to know what to do with such data. I had earlier interacted with the Central Road Research Institute; they had the most voluminous data on roads and traffic, but they could not monetise it. Thirdly, it is just as important to listen to the customer all through your evolution as a start-up,” Priyadarshi said.

For Pitti, it was accountability that is of utmost importance for any start-up. “Listening to the customer and being accountable is necessary. I still take customer calls and pass the feedback to the team. The start-up community needs to execute; don’t look for funding that has no business model. Everything else will fall in place,” Pitti said. Gadia said that it is important to first understand the commerce, get that in place and work on it and then go for the ‘e’.

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“India has 77,000 start-ups which have come up in the last few years and the growth of the start-ups has been growing consistently. Out of these, 122 are set to become the unicorns (any start-up that reaches the valuation of $1 billion). We have the world’s largest population and the talent to have many more such unicorns”  

–Rikant Pitti, Co-founder, EaseMyTrip