 Let me introduce you to Poini Bhatt students. We have this, she's going to talk about the incubator in IIT Bombay, which started very early and that helped us look at entrepreneurship in a very, very interesting way and very close way in IIT Bombay. Poini herself is a qualified legal and compliance professional. She was working in a bank earlier and a fellow member of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India turned to technology, business incubation by chance, helping entrepreneurs over a decade and experience of three decades in industry and academia. So that's been great support for all the incubators, having an experienced person like that at the helm of affairs. Thank you so much, Poini and please, we can start your session. Yeah, so thank you, Professor Chakraborty. I think along with me, let me also take a quick, like couple of minutes to introduce my colleagues here. So along with me, my colleague Bratati is there as well as Rakesh is there. They both are part of our incubation team here. So essentially looking after our own business, which is like getting pipeline and helping them incubator and so on and so forth. Bratati has a background in the biotechnology area. So is the case for Rakesh also and Bratati has done PhD and Rakesh has done his MBA as an additional thing. So over to you Bratati. Thank you Poini ma'am for your introduction and thank you Professor Chakraborty for this opportunity. I hope I'll do justice in introducing sign to all of those who are present here today. So today I am here on science behalf giving you a brief introduction about our technology business incubator. I am Bratati. I have like Poini ma'am pointed out PhD in biotechnology focusing on plant and algal biotechnology and I've joined sign in the past year and I'm part of the, I'm part of managing the BIRAC funded biotechnology schemes here at Sign as well as a part of the business development and the incubation group in general. On behalf of the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship or Sign as you know us here at IIT Bombay, we extend your warm welcome. Today's introductory session is geared to give you a quick glimpse into what we do here at Sign and how we can help you and those in your network to navigate the different aspects associated with starting a new business venture. And we are under the umbrella of IIT Bombay and we are the oldest ones associated with an academic institute. So most of you are familiar with how critical a business incubator's role is in the life of a young entrepreneur but nevertheless I reiterate and incubator is not only where new businesses get selected, supported and directed into profitable arenas but also where the necessary hand holding happens especially at the early stages in order to help young businesses find their footing. Also to raise necessary funds at every stage of the product development and make the connects that are so essential to its growth and survival. Now Sign is a leading technology business incubator, it's hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology here at Bombay and it is a not-for-profit organization and through the revenue and equity sharing with our incubators is how we are also a self-sustained entity. Now being IITB's business incubator we focus on deep tech IP generating startups which produce ventures that not only have an economic impact such as a high-risk high reward ventures as you all are mostly aware 2021's Unicorn Gupture was one of science incubated companies but also create strategic impact for instance targeting the defense and space tech sectors. IdeaForge is one such successful sign incubated companies that you probably have already heard about in this particular domain. We also try to reach have a social impact as well and we one of the ways that we do it is we have multiple healthcare domain startups as well that bring affordability and access to those who are marginally privileged in our communities thereby not only servicing the unmet needs of such sectors but creating significant social impact in the in its way. So overall our focus is hand-picking startups that we can foster that aim to bring futuristic technologies to make India global leader in innovation while also serving economic and social needs of the country. So we draw a lot of our pool of incubators from the IITB network within our system itself because we have a technology transfer thing at IRCC where a large number of our faculty and the student innovators file a lot of patterns and because of the support that IITB provides to its young entrepreneurs these can easily then be licensed out by the individuals once they choose to start their ventures. We also have many applied research centers such as Betik and WRCB as well as the Desai School of Entrepreneurship. Here also innovation is fostered at the earliest stages and a lot of interesting ventures come out of these centers and then they apply approach us for funding and incubation support. Also student clubs on campus such as the E-Cell and E-Club we do regular outreach with these and we also host and judge hackathons whereby some of these ideas can be test run and we can also get a regular interesting stream of early stage entrepreneurs as well. Now besides we also have association with the research path that also helps us connect with industry leaders, find support for incubated companies and foster further in synergies within the internal ecosystem. Now within the IITB system since it is such a high level R&D is available on campus mentorship connects within and also R&D facilities within the campus can be made accessible to our incubators as well. Now to this we meld our diverse external ecosystem. Our industry connects pool of domain specific leaders etc for mentorship as well as a rich network of investors who are interested in supporting our startups at different stages of development. Since most of our innovators often need help with designing and manufacturing their prototypes we also provide them with a lot of support whereby their prototypes can be refined and manufactured we provide them with such facilities and connects so that they can engineer and refine their prototypes in time. Other services that we provide are of course legal and financial help of different types help in financial IP filing and so on. We also have a trusted network of such service providers that we have used for several years and they often provide their help at discounted rates to us a sign provides start to scale support right through the the lifecycle of an entrepreneur's evolution and so we start from the pre incubation stage this is where the incubated companies or even innovators are at the ideation stage so very early stages there what we do is we provide them with small quantum of funds especially through government funding schemes and then once the product or technology has progressed a little bit in its development and there is an incorporated company that is when we bring them into the fold of our incubation program. Now our incubation program normally lasts for a period of about three years now during the stage at which a company is incubated with us we provide them several kinds of support for instance in infrastructure we provide a fully furnished office office facilities that are plug and play you can just rent these spaces and start work immediately we also have access to several kinds of labs with the state of the art research facilities and as I mentioned earlier we can also allow access to other R&D facilities on campus besides that also access to funding funding sources are very critical need of any startup at any stage and so depending upon the stage of the startup we also help our incubated companies raise funds through angel funding funding companies through vcs also we have a good network of banks in our network that also help with some of this funding also seed funds government grants as I mentioned earlier already we also provide extensive handholding and mentoring through the entire process we have specific programs to train and bring these entrepreneurs up to speed to keep them equipped with the recent tools that will help them succeed in their particular domains and so on so we often carry these out in a very targeted manner as well besides this visibility is very important for any startup and so we regularly try to showcase our top startups in front of investors we have investor days we mentor them to present effectively in front of these investors so that they can raise some funds themselves besides that we also regularly post about our startups we highlight their achievements in our social media posts and not a day goes by as most of you all are aware assigned the company is not in the news for some or the other achievement also as I mentioned already earlier we provide advisory support in the form of legal IP and other finance leads we help our companies with those support as well now finally once the incubation support is sufficiently pushed the innovator to the accelerator state is where we help with the scale up here again the industry connects raising follow-on funding we help a lot through our network with these needs of the company now if you look at the impact that we've created over the 17 years of their existence it is quite significant we have supported about 184 startups out of which 52 are currently with us 82 have graduated about 10 have been acquired or merged with other entities out of which 40 have folded but through our six in the wake of all our successes and failures we have been left with a rich experience that we share with our startups we help them describe their ideas and potentials and so this experience is something that is very valuable if you associate with us that you can benefit a lot from this experience that we've had over all these years now also sign helps as I said raise its incubator companies help helps it helps them raise funds and we've almost helped about raising about 25 crores of funds over our lifetime and out of the interesting statistic here is that for every rupee that we've helped the startup with it has managed to raise about 127 rupees through external funding which shows you the potential that and the the marketability of some of the companies that we host here we've also generated a good number of IPs and some of our companies have are very highly valued in the market and so their valuation is run into crores of rupees as you can see on this on screen and since each startup comes with at least three members we've also managed to generate a significant amount of employment as well so this is where the economic impact that we create is quite substantial now coming to government support we are supported by the Department of Science and Technology the Ministry of Information Electronics and Information Technology or MATI for short so we have DST, DBT and BIRAC which is the biotechnology research assistant council of DBT we're also supported by several granting schemes for each of these government entities as well and we also have other accelerator program support such as plug-in, AIT and DST supported, Mibhi Prayas and Mibhi EIR these are specially designed to support early stage startups in the biotech supported schemes we have several of them the most critical one is the one that supports ideation to proof of concept which is known as a biotechnology admission grant and for those in the biotech domain this is a nice quantum of funds about 50 lakhs for 18 months that can help launch an establishment of proof of concept in a very substantial manner and this grant the big BIRAC big grant it is launched it is announced twice a year and the first of January and first of August and we can provide a sign as one of the big partners and we can provide you extensive support if you are in that domain and interested in applying for this grant besides that if you're in the field of information technology and computation there are several MATE grants as well that can help you so again a summary of some of the programs that are that we that are supported through us plug-in for instance it is an acceleration program in collaboration with Intel and DST it is basically it's third we've completed three cycles of this program and during this about 10 startups are selected and they're provided with prototype growth support and Intel provides extensive technical mentorship during this process I've already mentioned some of the other government schemes through DST etc that we have we are also supported through the defense sector in the defense sector we have the defense and the startup challenge that also those of you who have innovations that can help the Indian Army Navy or Air Force this is a good challenge for you as well so we are deliberately sector agnostic because we want to keep ourselves open to all domains and develop a network so as to reach the widest range of entrepreneurs so we support startups in ICT in software, healthcare, clean tech to name a few you can see on the screen that we cover a wide range of domains now of course the line share of our companies belong to the healthcare domain now this is because the government focus is often to make healthcare accessible and affordable for the Indian populace and so there is always a lot of grant support and a lot of push from the government to support innovations in this sector as in other sectors such as clean energy and so on besides that in the fintech domain for instance companies as more and more companies are leaning towards digitization and data safety we're also getting a lot of entrepreneurs who are in that who are leaning towards that domain as well now at sign we are very selective in choosing the startups that we want to include in our incubation program as I mentioned earlier we look at high tech IP driven often futuristic and high tech technologies we normally look for companies that are beyond the proof of concept stage and closer to market now we try to avoid aggregated platforms and technologies that have low entry barriers basically and so we start we have a very strict vetting process and we started right with the application that is made online on our portal on our website innovators who are interested can apply online and that's where we start the vetting process first screening is by our internal team of business developers and we look at not only the tech but also the business plan the team and so on and once we are interested in a particular startup idea or an existing startup we then reach out to domain experts investors in the field which can help us in the external review process of these startups and we at least do a minimum of two of these reviews and get feedback which we also pass on to the people who are in our pipeline and if we receive favorable feedback from our reviewers then we go ahead and share our terms here is where we bring forth the revenue and equity sharing terms and if those are acceptable by the startup then we go on to bring them into our fold and provide them with help right away and as I mentioned earlier incubation period is for three years and during those three years at every stage whether you're coming through an incubation program or you're coming through a government granting scheme your progress is very regularly monitored any help or feedback that is essential for your success is provided as well I've mentioned already the government support some of the corporate CSR programs that support come through Intel, Mahindra, Tata, Consultancy Services, AIMS New Delhi and so on also Sanofe which is a major player in the healthcare domain and other banks such as Bank of Baroda we have very close relationships with our corporate partners now internationally we are part of some cross-border programs such as Swissnext where we have these exchange programs with the Swiss government and there have been programs where innovators from that country has visited and vice versa we also have a close relationship with Taiwan and we've also part of the Stanford Seats Park and with every year we are taking part in their training as well also we are part of cross-border programs with Canada through University of Toronto now beside all of these connects we also have a rich network of investors and this is very critical for any business incubator and its incubated companies to succeed so through we like I mentioned earlier through our investor day demos we regularly showcase our promising startups so that they can raise funds from the investors in our network like I mentioned earlier these are a few glimpses of the cross-border programs that we've been doing as part of Swissnext which is a Switzerland cross-border bootcamp that we had with the Swiss government and this was an academia industry training bootcamp we also have Taiwanese collaboration especially Manufacturers Association which is critical for us to make these connects with some of our incubated companies that need extensive prototype building now to highlight some of our most promising companies in the healthcare domain we have IU devices many of you are probably familiar we're very glad that we could actually get a little bit of presentation from Professor Biravi and IU devices we're pretty excited to see the product that's wonderful work which they did yes and it is it is a simplistic yet such an essential innovation that they've come up with it's basically a little module that they have developed that makes telling the students that it's not a full new product see it's a very nice user you know big thing when you just you know top of the cube and have an additional piece in the middle so IU devices especially this stethoscope that they have developed is was very critical during the COVID area to protect not only the doctors but the patients as well because the module can be taken out and through like Wi-Fi you can like the the doctor can listen in on any lung or heart abnormalities sorry and so this is a module so this modular nature of it and the ability to pass the information through bluetooth like enabled them to carry out this remote provide remote access to some of these critical care patients that require them then we also have end dimension they are basically developing an AI ML based tool to detect early stage lung nodules and other lung abnormalities through medical images because of our huge population pressure radiologists etc often under a lot of pressure and so they're quickly looking through these scans and might miss some of these early stage nodules that can actually be the intervention can happen early on but because of the huge pressure and the number of images that they look through they often miss these little things that can easily be picked up by an appropriate algorithm that this that this company has developed and so it can help in prevention of not only lung cancers but other lung abnormalities as well so it is an assistive tool basically that helps in better to provide better care to the patients also we have haystack and analytics they are basically bringing genomics into the forefront of diagnostics and they're revolutionizing the field as well especially the field of infectious diseases because they're working on antibiotic resistant tuberculosis and they're using genomic data to basically find out the susceptibility of certain strains and of certain patients to develop these drug resistant tuberculosis so they're going to they they've also made a major impact during COVID in coming up with quick ways to determine COVID variants etc and so they are they've managed to generate a lot of interested interest in their approaches they've raised external funding they are now valued at about 40 crores so very interesting product and very futuristic as well now coming quickly going over the other companies that have brought a lot of focus good focus on cyan and an IIT Bombay idea forge is one of the largest suppliers of drones to the Indian army and they have other surveillance solutions as well and their entrepreneurial journey again is very very inspiring and you will get to hear from them as well and the Attenberg I think they've come up with the energy efficient fans and also med brand technologies they've come up with a smartphone based portable digital microscope and actually we use this in our bio lab and so extremely good product and so these are some of the companies that we thought we'd highlight so I mentioned this already Sine has a BioNest supported state-of-the-art biomedical bio like wet lab and so it's equipped with some of the state-of-the-art facilities and we are now a center of excellence so we are expanding and we will hopefully incorporate other essential facilities as well to our existing research facilities we also have a good metalworking and prototype building labs as well again we are a small and friendly team you can approach us at any point from the ideation to further on we have a diverse group of people with a combined experience of more than two 20 years and as you can see with all of us from the Sine team we have experience in diverse fields and so when put together we can help you with most of your business needs and we are very approachable and you can just pick up the phone and call whoever you think can help you with something for government funding especially for early stage entrepreneurs to get your foot through the door government funding is the best way to go and you can always contact me you can contact Dr. Pranitha for some of these Bayrak funds you can contact Rashmi and Rakesh for other kinds of funds as well so for whether it be funding support or other help we're always there to help you now for all incubation related our queries you can reach our senior incubation managers all the information that you need is on our website and you can of course write to us at incubation at SineITB.org like I said we are extremely approachable and we are ready to hear you from an idea that you might have to a company that you might be ready to launch so we really look forward to hearing from you and that will be all from me. Yeah so that was quite an overview brother thank you very much so in the audience if you are a faculty member and really working with your startup center or setting up the startup center like you know I'm sure you've got the kind of ecosystem that needs to be created the kind of government programs support available to get the things going and the kind of impact that is getting basically expected from an incubation center if you're a venture or potential you know entrepreneurs then I think this will give you an idea the kind of incubators you should be going and how incubators are supporting you. Oini I'm very happy to mention to you that out of these 45 students of IIT Hyderabad where we're you know trying to you know take this course on 10 of them have already have entrepreneurship incubation experience which is like phenomenal so nowadays we get students already who are sort of you know and then of course another 10 of them are from industry they've spent you know one year to seven years in industry so you know so sometimes I tell the students that now you should start teaching us how to go about doing things I know we can only facilitate you you know to take things forward. No it's really good because like I visited IIT Hyderabad maybe about four or five years just to give an idea about like setting up the incubation center and things are happening and then there are already 10 entrepreneurs in the group and it's really like you know progressing it also indicates the kind of ecosystem that like you know countries evolving at a macro level so interesting. I think that I don't have any presentation and I'm going to basically do some kind of a free flowing conversation here that what it takes to basically spin out especially spin out I use the word spin out because we all are sitting up in academic setup and then ultimately like you know the work that we do either as a academic project as a student or R&D activity or design activity in this particular case as a part of like you know faculty member or faculty project yeah ultimately our work belongs to you know institute and then when you want to start you have to spin it out we just can't get started with right. So you have like you know as an entrepreneur or potential entrepreneur whether you are a student or whether you are a faculty member you have an idea you have a technology you have a product or solution yeah and how do you go about it right like you can create a company simplistically put you can create a company and get started couple of guys coming together but I think it a lot more is basically involved yeah when you get started if the understanding is basically developed up front or the kind of you know processing is done somewhat in advance yeah then the journey to market basically get shortened otherwise you basically get started and you learn a lot on your way you have to come back again work on the drawing board again go back so that back and forth will basically you know give a lend them your process and at times in technology space the way things are evolving you also become redundant yeah so hence it is important that like you know some kind of understanding some kind of activity mapping is very much necessary before you get started and like for me like activity said I think that case we'll talk about link and must order as long as I'm concerned I'm talking about some four or five broad broad things basically you may want to pay attention to so first and foremost I would say like and these are not necessarily in like same order but then critical each of them is very critical so first thing I would basically put is that we are your IP product solution technology whatever you develop within academia it needs the clean ownership title so as I said that IP typically are all academic work or all all developmental work you know ownership belongs to basically IIT I mean not IIT your your host institute where you are like you know for seeing this activity so since the ownership belongs to the institute you cannot take or we cannot take it for granted that this belongs to me and I just get started the process basically is to go to the institute and see basically licensing for technology transfer to get started and that gives you a clean title in fact the point you hit on this very very important aspect of you know sometimes the whole you know department where there is a guide and a student working together in fact when we had fights between PhD student and his PhD guide you know both started the companies and both were fighting and even they're fighting till now for example you know we should be very clear that intellectual property at the institute level at the student level at the guide level is very different you know and from there when you go for intellectual property there and then it's one story where you know you've done as a student guide but then when you do a company you need to actually buy this right or you know like and then when you buy this right your guide can also have a small share out of the royalty for example so there are a lot of schemes no point in yeah absolutely unless the guide basically you know says that like gave the rights that it is always good to have the guide taking along because in future you need his or her like you know goodwill or help in developing further because it's not you get started with one thing but as you grow you require multiple product solutions offering sometimes you pivot and their support is always needed when you go along right so so I think clean title or clean ownership is very important now like just professor mentioned about it right that student faculty and many students so there could be many innovators and each of them are authored to this IP or knowledge right and their NOC is equally important so if you if you are not taking them along say for example as a as a co-founder or as a part of the how do you develop a model to compensate them for their efforts so in future when you grow big I'm sure all of you would have seen this movie on the Facebook right and then like Mark Zuckerberg started and then eventually actually when he started either there were two other co-inventor of the things that they were doing and he never recognized him as a co-founder never gave them any founder equity and eventually he had to settle for millions of dollar basically as a compensation and you don't want to lend yourself in that particular situation yeah so not that I'm telling that all of us are going to be Mark Zuckerberg but it's always and ultimately like you know you want to have a smooth path when you go along right so that's one thing second thing is that basically that would be a funded project like within the academic area like setup it's very easy to get funding from the government from the industry collaborator so and so forth now when especially it is an industry collaborator yeah they they have their own IP condition in terms how do you basically you know navigate those terms and condition that is another thing so if you are working on particular solution technology or whatever and then there is a industry collaborator who is sitting basically it will write in the IP that will not permit you to spin off as you want to in future so you have to smartly negotiate IP terms at the time of taking the project itself or else you may lose that chance you have to go back and really negotiate with that and it took again take many years and years we are actually dealing with a company which is in a power sector IP belongs to two industry plus IIT Bombay taking an NOC is not easy for them it's almost three years and they are still not getting an NSE fortunately it's a multi product company the company is doing pretty good but they are not able to leverage the other IP where they were banking a lot. Her thing is that like if the IP is protectable like it's best thing IPable and a patentable it is best thing to do basically you know apply for the patent because once you get started and information is out in the in the public like you know it becomes difficult for patenting so like once you disclose your work it cannot be patented so these are the nuances one has to work on it and there's no IP technologies basically generally known to everyone in all those things and you want to get into startup you we want to assist your freedom to operate because someone else may have that IP and you are not infringing so this is a very important part basically that you like you know as an entrepreneur especially if you are in academic environment to pay attention to second thing is like a team entrepreneurial journey more successful entrepreneur you will see it is never a single person journey there's a core team and then there is a key employee first employees and that's how they get started now how do you go about like you know as an entrepreneur you come to everything you build the product you sell the product you manage the finance you manage the operation if it is a physical product you manage the manufacturing aspect it can't happen practically like you know you need to possess five five functional skills set in a single person that's one thing and second thing is that physically it will be challenging to manage all the functions so as in and especially for an entrepreneur and first-generation entrepreneur yeah resources are not really going to be very you know available to you so how do you map your activity and functions so you you find out the core team which is a founder still that can be complimentary still set and this has to be done very carefully because it like requires a very strong chemistry between the founders it requires complimentary skills set many times there could be chemistry but then like and everyone is wanting to do technology no one wants to sell or everyone wants to do basically sell the product because it's more in outgoing and networking kind of a role but no one wants to develop technology it won't work this way third thing is that like you know even with great chemistry like you know founders basically personal vision personal aspirations or career path may not align because entrepreneurship is a very you know lendy risky road map right and like if the co-founder wants basically say it's sitting on the fence of it two or three years i will give it and then i will move on if it doesn't work then the whole thing get colleagues so complimentary skillset and basically you know shared vision shared basically you know thought process is extremely important while you do it like again because chemistry is doing good and we are great friends in college and we have done like you know k212 together also we went to college in the same hostel and all those things in department so we will do great and we don't need anything else nothing working startup you require founder's agreement this funder's agreement has to spell out the roles and responsibility yeah what is the like you know each of them are committing to in terms of money in terms of activity in terms of role so even equity sharing again it is in in in basically you know uh context with the roles and responsibility in who is voting war so just to give you an example there are three co-founders one co-founder basically had developed one pattern like you know which is going to take out another co-founder has basically put in money and third co-founder is just joining so third co-founder cannot get the same equity as the first two because some first two has brought something more than like you know playing a role as a co-founder to the table so but equity mapping also has to be very judicious otherwise as you go along and as the new team skill set is required new team members are coming up this equity basically structuring is going to pinch you so this meaning equal equity structure is going to pinch you so it has to be in context with who is bringing what value who is taking away what risk yeah and how much commitment basically each of them are going to give that's how you have to put the equity second thing is that like as i mentioned that as you grow like you know as a venture you also require new skill set sometimes you require people new co-founders right like you know provision in the founders agreement that each of you dilute in proportion to accommodate the new founder similarly someone wants to go out right so how do you basically deal with that person's security because like you know 30 percent of equity and person is going out he cannot he or she cannot walk out or walk away with 30 percent of equity it has to come back to the rest of the founder otherwise they they won't have you know incentive to continue right so these are the nuances basically has to be properly properly putting in founders agreement in fact i remember at least like you know half a dozen of our entrepreneurs who have changed in equity founders team they have come and told us to your founders agreement man that you are insisting is helping us so much in smooth the transition of outgoing people and new incoming people so it's very very important right you start as a founder but then you also take initial key employees yeah either at a technology level or as a market sales and market level you may have very critical you require that critical employees but not actually founder because they have not taken the risk they want salary you want to pay them and so on so forth so they are like exactly co-founders they are also very important to the organization and as i said that as a startup like you know you don't have like you know enough resources to match industry salary then how do you go about it so create a pool of sweat equity or is soft and those key employees agreement also is extremely important to put it in place so there are i think i've seen in especially engineers when they start in iIT system or other engineering you know colleges i've seen they are typically like you know technologists and the natural thought process is that my product and technology will sell by itself and we are great friends and we will get started and in the process they actually ignore very critical aspect of you know core activity to be mapped or put in place which basically you know otherwise come in their way like you know in a smooth operation i've seen couple of companies basically going bust because one of the co-founder has actually worked out yeah so this can be avoided if the co-founders agreement is in place so team is another so first is iIT another is team third team customer discovery i think it's very very important as i mentioned like you know product technology solution they don't sell by themselves they sell only if there is a need in the market right especially in context with sizing because like you know you don't want to deal with like you know just one customer or 10th customer unless you are in a very very you know niche or strategic needs so idea forge for example this is one of sign companies that the entire market is a defense market they bring tremendous strategic value to the country and then like you know going with very few customer makes lots of sense and that customer itself is a very huge customer right it's not a small customer so competition analysis like you know why why someone buy your product or technology or solution or for that matter design versus what is available in the market like you know why someone would pay you for that yeah and then how big that market because because the market chances are like you know high that yours will be successful and you will will raise larger money here so this three four things are very very critical to basically you know math then then fundability like you know there are varied sources of funds available right now in country like you know first i think first risk taker right now in in the country or at least when we started you know first risk capital came from the government and it is not an overstatement and we started in early 2000 we didn't have VC community that what we see this time angels were completely non-existent in those days in fact when i joined i had to understand what angel angel investing means yeah and then with that background government started funding basically public institutions or incubators like us so government it does not you know big big funders this this then you have angel investors then you have we see venture capital firms then you have even corporate strategic capital they they look certain elements in your startup the government of course it's a basically mark toward bringing technology progress technology strength or self-sufficiency so that is their main objective and they support very high risk innovation via like you know funds that they have created and absolutely no return yes they do practice the success and like you know performance parameter and all those things but the return need not be given to government but government even doesn't accept in yes or no kind of return and idea for this is a classic example right then it was that's a strategic offering we supported them like we supported them in their pivot because they didn't start with this strategic solution yeah we supported them in pivot there was a funding given to them and right now what they have developed is actually adding the strength of difference and security forces in the country the interest is exactly government wants in varied domains like health care gate education and all over yeah so this is one one funding availability second funding is it like the VC or angel funding VC and angel funding that typically interest in funding this particular uh spaces then return on capital so if you are going to those investors be mindful that you need to have scalable business you cannot have non scalable business you need to basically give an exit to them at least for partial exit to them in first three to four years total exit may be five six years yeah but you have to provide that exit opportunity in three to four years so they are looking at like you know yes competitiveness is one thing but then scalability is a big thing for them so if you really look at it like all this e-com and app businesses there's not much IP or technology depth out there but there is a huge scale massive scale and they get funded typically uh then comes to a strategic capital which is like you know typically coming from industry like they have a strategic interest or synergistic interest in the solution maybe uh for for adopting or integrating their solution in like startup solution in their scheme of things or maybe eventually like you know acquiring them and there are you know ample examples of them so they look at more from relevance viewpoint like you know market sizing and all those things comes as a second step but more relevance to their own businesses so this is what like uh uh uh industry or strategic capital look at it and finally like uh family businesses as I said there are not ample or too many but they are there basically uh like you know just shaping up family businesses like any other investment like you know idea is to create startup investment as one of the asset class and they have an appetite for like you know long stay like typically seven eight years or even could be more if it is a celebrity capital like you know early about or that we are looking they are also investing basically in this startup ecosystem yeah so these are the funding availability and depending on your startup or depending on the funder you go you need to pitch them from their their interest viewpoint not what what basically you want or what you want is has to be basically mapped to that otherwise like you know someone who is only investing in ecom business and all those things and you are going with some nuclear innovation I am not too sure you will basically hit the right button yeah so these are the funding aspect and then some kind of you know wrapping up to get started so Ragu and I don't know whether they have already done this customer discovery but that is one aspect there are business model revenue model how are you going to basically map initial activity at least in first six months or one year I think my colleague Rakesh is going to basically share this thought on link and mass model so that is uh that is the prepping up for this data I think these are basically the whole thing to basically go forward even before you set up a venture yeah maybe fundability you can basically work as you go along but at least you require initial capital and somewhere you are going to pitch it if you are not going to bootstrap it so that is also equally important so IP team market fundability and initial like you know thought process about like revenue model business model uh who to bring as a past partners and so on so forth right of course things can pivot so like you know at a growth level or at the same level things keep on shifting and so that like you know what you have done so far will also keep on shifting but these are the four elements needed to basically a thought through while you get started I would also last my closing this thing is that while you do all those things I think there are certain traits are must-in entrepreneurs unless you have those traits you may really want to revisit your thought whether you are basically up for entrepreneurship or not so first and foremost is mindset it has to be an entrepreneurial mindset uh ability to take this basically yeah uh which means it's a it's a long journey lots of ups and downs like you know and are you up for that long hold that is one thing so it's a mindset that's one thing second thing is is flexibility so you get started with some design technology solution or whatever it is even after doing all those market sizing or whatever but things keep on changing it's very very dynamic markets are very dynamic right so ability to basically give up you what you have done and this is I have seen basically especially uh academia and engineers uh coming out of academia because they have worked on their product technology solution they are so wedded to their like you know uh faithful to their own own basically uh solutions and technology they just can't give up easily they become very emotionally attached to that but market forces may push you to basically you know think through differently yeah that time the ability to basically you know pivot or also when you grow you require different leadership different skill set ability to pass the battle so flexibility is extremely important and last thing I I generally emphasize for first generation entrepreneur you may take whatever you know shortcuts but it's a long journey like and ethics play a big big role so you may basically you know jugado will take you a jugado approach or aggression will take you up to certain level but if you want to build an organization I think it's a value and ethics value for stakeholder value to your people value to what you are doing extremely important I think chaco I'm going to close here happy to answer any question first point is really resonating very strong about value and ethics it's so critical to understand the contribution done done by everybody you know and also I'll take a look at it closely on you know how to build an organization which is you know which is you know equitable and you know which works wonderful thank you so much pointy for your you know words and those are coming from the horses mouth so it's very sorry to use that use the analogy but we wanted to hear you out and this is like you you captured all the key points from the intellectual property to the issue of funding to you know how you you know how you you know sort of build your teams and pivot your idea and you know I keep telling my own professors in IIT Bombay and other students that the people who kill the you know you yourself are the ones who are killing your companies nobody else can kill your company so you know if you're not able to do well it's all because of you you know that's the whole thing you know in entrepreneurship that you need to understand the he's the king customer is the king in fact when I was working in L&T the pointy they took us all the way to lona vala to just tell us that customer is the king and they showed us some beautiful movies and they said look customer king so here you know since I'm hearing you know Ragu and you all of you talking about customer discovery and how critical that is you know from point of view of building you know it just resonates again you know how valuable this whole you know ideas you know students any quick questions you have now for pointy yeah so I have a question please go ahead yeah so like ma'am said about the investor so I had a little doubt like as you mentioned that pitching in the idea should not always from our side like what we want to do as a designer but it should also focus on like what the investor way is but what they are looking as investors so I'm not really clear on that I actually corrected myself then in there itself it's not basically you want to do something yes your your idea or basically your your potential business not idea your potential business basically has to map the basically you know positioning of the investor that's what like so if you are that's what I was just telling you that if you are developing something really core to say nuclear kind of thing and if you go to an investor who is only investing say in IT or ecom kind of businesses and who is looking for an exit in two years right you're not going to the right investor so I'm not telling that you you shift according to their requirement yes sometimes you we need to shift it if there is a case to it yeah but point is that that your business or your point need should be mapped to investors interest the profile of the investor because investors come with different different you know different sectors and you know goals also they want immediate money or money after 10 years different so that's what point he was mentioning yeah okay yeah yeah so the mapping should be correct yeah correct you anybody who comes your way and say I'm going to put money on you remember I was talking about actually actually I will learn this very hard way right into like IIT Bombay incubators started in late 90s yeah sign started in 2004 but we had a pilot incubator in those days and in those days as I told you we didn't have any investment community in the country right and the investors who were there were typically PEE private activity private equity typically basically invest in like you know a 50 60 crore and the participating management at times they take over the money also depending on PEE that they go to and like you know when when we wanted to create ecosystem we didn't sign we will get all this PEEs to meet basically an entrepreneur so what startup is talking about and what PEEs wanting to hear there was no matching point at all yeah and then we realized that we were bringing wrong set of people to the incubator yeah so like this is what I mean by that like you know when you are in startup thing like maybe if you are doing something which gives basically which takes about five to six years to develop a healthcare product nowadays healthcare problem even VCs are invested but initial days they were not or defense product that I was talking about you need to go to a capital which is a patient capital who are willing to stay there for six seven eight years not pushing a company for that seat yeah so typically this is celebrity capital is a very patient capital yeah and we have couple of example here and we have two companies in defense one is idea for that is also a company called ZS Numerics they both were funded by Enger and both of them were basically looking at basically you know that I need one company in my portfolio where I can you know brag about that this is a very high-tech portfolio for me yeah and they were not even looking at investing like or sorry executive yeah they had enough money of their own so that is how like you know and now they are very proud of idea 4d see absolutely and they're so proud and you know yes like you know I'll tell you they call themselves as a DNA company so they design anything which is defense nuclear aerospace you give anything they have a stories like in buffers they wanted some kind of design changes Israel companies had given them 1800 crore like you know quote this guy did it in 30 yeah just 30 crore and then they cannot they're done with the solution yeah it's amazing what that they are doing like but they will never become a big company to give exit to their investor and their investor is very happy yeah