The special month-long bootcamp was a perfect confluence of mentorship and knowledge-sharing that characterises Leap To Unicorn Season 2, a platform for startup growth and funding created by IDFC FIRST Bank, in association with Moneycontrol and CNBC-TV18. It featured perceptive sessions, headlined by prominent guest speakers, mostly entrepreneurs, investors and VCs, who shared lessons and experiences with 600 participating startup founders and showed them how to turn their startups into viable businesses.
Curated by Saanchi Connect, ecosystem partners for Leap To Unicorn Season 2, the bootcamp got off to a rousing start with legendary entrepreneur, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, laying out the core tenets of effective leadership during the session on ‘Leadership Utopia’. Subsequent sessions during the exciting first week of the bootcamp touched upon essential principles of startup building.
It included ‘Business Validation & Viability’ with Amit Shukla, Founder and CEO of EaseMyGov, ‘Design Thinking: Delivering WoWs to Customers’ with Amber Krishnan, Founder of THEM Consulting, and a session on ‘Building Prototype & Testing the Waters’ with Rahul Jain, CEO of Epigamia.
It segued seamlessly into explorations of specific growth avenues, starting with Shireesh Joshi, Chief Business Officer, ONDC, explaining how ONDC’s open e-commerce platform provides scale and flexibility to startups. He was followed by Arpit Agarwal, Partner at Blume Ventures, Puneet Gupta, Founder & CEO of Clensta, and Dr. Atul Mehta, CEO at Pay 10, doling out lessons over successive sessions on how to frame a business model, create an organizational structure, and nurture customer relationships, respectively.
If these sessions were all about the nitty-gritties of startup building, the session on ‘Art of Story Building and Expressing – Winning Customers and Investors’, featuring Jayant Goel, Director, BrightBridge Advisors, delved into the nuances of building trust and managing expectations among stakeholders.
Lessons in how to build a captivating narrative around a startup was broken down into actionable insights during the session on ‘Beyond the Slides: The Storytelling Element in Pitching’ by Chetan Bhatia, Co-Founder of Honest Create. It was bookended by tactical sessions on how to choose the right social media channels by Sourabh Goyal, Founder and CEO of SuccessBrew, and ‘Avoiding Pitfalls: What to do and what not to do’, featuring Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founder of CashKaro. Strategy experts made their presence felt during the final week of the bootcamp. Eklavya Gupta, Founder of Recur Club, helped founders with the fundamentals of ‘Mastering Startup Capital: How to Use Equity and Debt for Business Expansion’, while Ankit Nagori, Founder of Curefoods, explained ‘Strategies for Triumph: Outsmarting Competition, Creating MOAT’, and Manju Menon, CEO & Co-Founder of NuSocia, capped off the bootcamp with ideas on how businesses can blend profit with purpose.
A packed bootcamp schedule also featured special masterclasses, focused on imparting statutory knowledge to the participants. Varun Rajda, Founding Partner of Constellation Blu, spoke to the founders about ‘Navigating Financial and Taxation Aspects in Business Operations’. Experts in startup banking from IDFC FIRST Bank explained what makes the ‘Right Banking Partner for Startups’. The guest speakers for the session listed out the great banking features that demonstrate IDFC FIRST Bank’s commitment to serving the financial needs of their startup clients. It gave startup founders a preview of what an empowering future looks like, built on cutting edge fintech services and powered by a willingness to push the boundaries.
The comprehensive guidance provided throughout the bootcamp sessions was enough to infuse the founders with renewed inspiration, as they now retreat to refine their pitch decks and produce video presentations. Their updated pitch decks and video presentations will be evaluated to identify the top 100 startups of Leap To Unicorn Season 2. This list will be further whittled down to the Top 20, who will compete for funding and mentorship from a jury of pre-eminent investors and venture capitalists. The bootcamp has truly opened a vista of new possibilities for India’s best early-stage startups. The only question is, are these startups ready to make the leap?
Note: This is a partnered post.
Curated by Saanchi Connect, ecosystem partners for Leap To Unicorn Season 2, the bootcamp got off to a rousing start with legendary entrepreneur, Sanjeev Bikhchandani, laying out the core tenets of effective leadership during the session on ‘Leadership Utopia’. Subsequent sessions during the exciting first week of the bootcamp touched upon essential principles of startup building.
It included ‘Business Validation & Viability’ with Amit Shukla, Founder and CEO of EaseMyGov, ‘Design Thinking: Delivering WoWs to Customers’ with Amber Krishnan, Founder of THEM Consulting, and a session on ‘Building Prototype & Testing the Waters’ with Rahul Jain, CEO of Epigamia.
It segued seamlessly into explorations of specific growth avenues, starting with Shireesh Joshi, Chief Business Officer, ONDC, explaining how ONDC’s open e-commerce platform provides scale and flexibility to startups. He was followed by Arpit Agarwal, Partner at Blume Ventures, Puneet Gupta, Founder & CEO of Clensta, and Dr. Atul Mehta, CEO at Pay 10, doling out lessons over successive sessions on how to frame a business model, create an organizational structure, and nurture customer relationships, respectively.
If these sessions were all about the nitty-gritties of startup building, the session on ‘Art of Story Building and Expressing – Winning Customers and Investors’, featuring Jayant Goel, Director, BrightBridge Advisors, delved into the nuances of building trust and managing expectations among stakeholders.
Lessons in how to build a captivating narrative around a startup was broken down into actionable insights during the session on ‘Beyond the Slides: The Storytelling Element in Pitching’ by Chetan Bhatia, Co-Founder of Honest Create. It was bookended by tactical sessions on how to choose the right social media channels by Sourabh Goyal, Founder and CEO of SuccessBrew, and ‘Avoiding Pitfalls: What to do and what not to do’, featuring Rohan Bhargava, Co-Founder of CashKaro. Strategy experts made their presence felt during the final week of the bootcamp. Eklavya Gupta, Founder of Recur Club, helped founders with the fundamentals of ‘Mastering Startup Capital: How to Use Equity and Debt for Business Expansion’, while Ankit Nagori, Founder of Curefoods, explained ‘Strategies for Triumph: Outsmarting Competition, Creating MOAT’, and Manju Menon, CEO & Co-Founder of NuSocia, capped off the bootcamp with ideas on how businesses can blend profit with purpose.
A packed bootcamp schedule also featured special masterclasses, focused on imparting statutory knowledge to the participants. Varun Rajda, Founding Partner of Constellation Blu, spoke to the founders about ‘Navigating Financial and Taxation Aspects in Business Operations’. Experts in startup banking from IDFC FIRST Bank explained what makes the ‘Right Banking Partner for Startups’. The guest speakers for the session listed out the great banking features that demonstrate IDFC FIRST Bank’s commitment to serving the financial needs of their startup clients. It gave startup founders a preview of what an empowering future looks like, built on cutting edge fintech services and powered by a willingness to push the boundaries.
The comprehensive guidance provided throughout the bootcamp sessions was enough to infuse the founders with renewed inspiration, as they now retreat to refine their pitch decks and produce video presentations. Their updated pitch decks and video presentations will be evaluated to identify the top 100 startups of Leap To Unicorn Season 2. This list will be further whittled down to the Top 20, who will compete for funding and mentorship from a jury of pre-eminent investors and venture capitalists. The bootcamp has truly opened a vista of new possibilities for India’s best early-stage startups. The only question is, are these startups ready to make the leap?
Note: This is a partnered post.
Check out our in-depth Market Coverage, Business News & get real-time Stock Market Updates on CNBC-TV18. Also, Watch our channels CNBC-TV18, CNBC Awaaz and CNBC Bajar Live on-the-go!
