Moneycontrol Startup Conclave 2024 Highlights: IITs and IIMs have to be absolutely radical, says Amitabh Kant

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"We love to interact with startups who have brilliant ideas and I strongly feel that the startups, if they have an interest in healthcare, they have to work with an established group," says Dr Devi Shetty

Investors either don't care about us which is sad but they don't have trouble with us

"If you love your work, it stops being work, it is a joy. It is a joy working from morning till evening, because you love what you're doing," says Dr Devi Shetty.

"Dr Shetty pushes us to the edge and my role is to cool things done. If I would have been in his position I would not have been able to start this company," says Biren Shetty

Dr Devi Shetty says, "Healthcare is delivered by people and some of the outstanding doctors and nurses are Indians. We believe health insurance will transform and be the agent to pay for the healthcare of working-class people."

Devi Shetty, Founder and Chairman, Narayana Health, on why India is ruled by God: India will prove to the world that the wealth of the nation, or wealth of the family has nothing to do with the quality of healthcare, its citizens will enjoy

How he managed to convince so many for the freedom struggle. It is because of the purpose. It's nothing to do with me it's the purpose why doctors don't leave our organisation.

If the purpose is explained in the beginning and if it is for the greater good then cosmic forces will align for your dreams to come true. Some of the most talented doctors can earn maybe three times working for other hospitals. But they choose to work with us because of the purpose

We underestimate the power of purpose. When you start a venture the discussion is about what to do and how to do. Very rarely ask why to do. Interestingly, we have some of the most talented doctors who earn three times in other hospitals but they choose to work with us for decades

Dr Devi Shetty says," I had some money but didn't have enough capital. Mr Krishna Kumar suggested to raise some money. Then I went back to ICICI and told them Tata Finance is investing. They said if Tata investing the we'll too. I told the same to ICICI."

When we started many hospitals were treating the rich. But you (Devi Shetty), focused on volumes. You said you wanted to build business by addressing the rest 99 percent and not the top 1 percent, says Viren Shetty

Dr Devi Shetty, founder and chairman, Narayana Health: I should go back to Kolkata. I had no capital, no experience of building a business. I had a dream that Kolkata needed a heart hospital. It was hard to get money. As a senior practicing doctor in Kolkata I went for dinner and a non discrete person suggested applying for a piece of land.

One day I got a call from CM's office. It was the same person who I met at the dinner party. I got the land. But then I realised I needed the capital. My wife helped me with some funds. Chairman of ICICI KV Kamath he's a friend to whom I told I want to built a hospital.

"What's not changed about Sahil is he is very data driven. What's changed is that as a public market entrepreneur he has to finally come out to give interviews," says Sumer Juneja

We want to find the next Harsha (Sriharsha Majety) and next Sahil (Barua). We haven’t found them yet, says Sumer Juneja

Ecommerce is only about half our revenues today. The value of Delhivery is in the fact that we are the large integrated player in the space. Nobody in their right mind will build a logistics company.

Sriharsha Majety says,"In other parts of the world, quick commerce was more of a top up purchase but in India, the model is different. The basket is bigger. We would have had it more difficult if we didn’t have the first mover advantage."

As quick commerce proceeds, the supply change is going to see a rearrangement. It will impinge on traditional retail.

Sahil Barua says," Consumers are never going to say they need things slower.The vast majority of ecommerce in India is long tail and lower value. That doesn't lend itself to this format (quick commerce)"

Quick commerce has acquired 30-40 mn users. This cohort only occasionally visited kiranas. They shopped online.

Sriharsha Majety says,"Large part of our (Swiggy Instamart) revenue comes from D2C brands. Swiggy Instamart not taking share away from kiranas. As quick commerce proceeds, the supply change is going to see a rearrangement. It will impinge on traditional retail."

There have not been many $50M plus investments in tech in the last 15 months. We are looking very hard. India has been a phenomenal market for us in terms of exit. It (India portfolio) has been one of the best we have in the vision fund.

We are one of the largest shares of Ola Electric. What Bhavish has created is phenomenal. He has delivered on the promise of EV revolution

Communicating clearly is the next focus. Rest, nothing else changes for us. The long-term focus will continue, says Swiggy's Sriharsha Majety

G20 was digitally driven in many, many ways. Our websites and many other things that we did would have been attacked, while nothing could penetrate us because of very strong cyber security. So don't think we are weak on cyber security.

Huge amount of work is being done on cyber security. When you take action on cyber security, you don't make things public, unlike Data Protection Act, etc.

There's a shortage of product developers. Where are the product develooers, where are the AI engineers? Don't worry about value addition. We should focus on production. Value addition happens in the four to five years.

Nowhere in the world value addition has happened in the initial years. Did Maruti when they came to India start doing value addition to?

We need states to support manufacturing. MSMEs never grow in isolation. AI is transformational. I think from startups to large companies, everyone should adopt AI.

Every company in India should be AI-first. It's a transformative technology. The curriculum in IIT, IIM is outdated. You are producing engineers, but they are not AI-ready

95% of the manufacturing for the top 25 companies like Dell and others is being done in China. This mould can be broken only through JVs and joint manufacturing efforts.

Lot of reforms being done on patent and trademark, startup movement, and manufacturing.

What the eco survey has said is that in areas like component manufacturing we need to get into a JV with China. We just don't want to allow the companies to be owned by China.

We should never go for intermediary technology. (Hydrogen) You will see a stable policy soon pushing for EV 2w, 3W, and Buses, says Amitabh Kant

Everyone today knows what a DPI is. African countries, Latin American and other countries are coming to India to tap into the DPI in India.

We need a range of Deeptech startups. Deeptech means patient capital.78% of capital is coming from foreign sources of funding.We need to develop Indian sources of funding.

Large Navaratnas and traditional companies should invest in startups.

Startups have to be a major driver of growth and job creation. If young startups did not push for EVs ,then established players would not have brought any models of EVs.

We had several stories within the startup world which had high valautaions yet collapsed.It proves that there is a need for good governance, especially self governance.

If a startup does not do self governance, do not be financial disciplined then regulators will step in.

Disruption across sectors will not come from large companies, but young startups, says Amitabh  Kant

From the budget of Rs 15,000 crores to build Amravati, by the time they release Rs 15,000 crore, we would have delivered.

So I am sure, with the new policies and the way the government is now very focused on creating the industrial townships, which are very tech oriented. So, with those kind of focus, I am sure we will be able to attract these companies back to Karnataka, says Ekroop Caur, IT-BT Secretary,

My intention as a minister is that as many Kannadigas are employed. I will ensure that we skill them. Let me assure that nothing (reservation) will come out without consultancy of stakeholders

The catch line for Moneycontrol's Startup Conclave is persist, reset and rebuild. And I'd like to assure you that the government of Karnataka, too believes in this. We are very persistent with the policies, we are ready to reset to ensure businesses prime and generate employment, and we are ready to rebuild. To ensure you become entrepreneurs.

We have set up global innovation alliance across many countries. This is to give global market access to startups.

We are soon launching a programe for people who have quit their jobs to persue entrepreneurship. We will cover for the salary loss. We are soon launching an entrepreneurship development program. If you have quit, we pay a salary.

We have close to around 402 startups in Mangalore cluster, we have 432 in Hubli-Dharwad Belagavi cluster, we have close to around 463 crore, 1500 innovative startups are all over Karnataka who are not even leveraging the Bangalore ecosystem.

At the cost of sounding arrogant, 25% of all the startups or tech startups in Karnataka leverage deep tech. So we are not just replicating some European model or American model, e commerce, e-commerce. We are actually leveraging deep deep tech at close to 25-28 per percent of our tech startups in the world.We have 1100 active women-led startups

We have 1,565 Venture capital funds, we have more than 17000 angel investors in Karnataka.

We have close to around 3600 tech startups, Why Im so overconfident at the cost if sounding arrongant is that 25-28% of startups leverage deeptech. We are only behind the Bay Area, New York and London in terms of unicorns. 25 percent of startups in banaglore leverage deep tech. We aren’t replicating foreign models but building innovation. At the cost of sounding arrogant, 25% of all the startups or tech startups in Karnataka leverage deep tech. So we are not just replicating some European model or American model, e commerce, e-commerce. We are actually leveraging deep deep tech at close to 25-28 per percent of our tech startups in the world.

A lot of people think that Karnataka became a innovation ecosystem overnight. It did not happen like that. It has taken us more than three decades of hard work, more than three decades of planning, more than three decades of persistence and consistent policy making to reach where we are. And we have started right from our education system. We have the highest number of female employable talent.

We will go for IPO but only once we are sustainably profitable. Most of the Delhi firms that are listed have been around over 10 years. So you will have to allow Bangalore startups some time.

With ONDC the gestation period is longer. You have to go offline and help businesss built a rich catalog. Then comes real-time inventory data. We want to go deeper into the grocery category. Right now, we are still building, says Sameer Nigam

Sameer Nigam on Share.Market: I for one as a broker, will not judge where people invest their money. But from a regulation point of view where it comes from is that it is legal activity but it is risky. I, as a broker (Share Market) will not pass judgement on where people should invest. But it (F&O trading) needs to be tempered, ofcourse.

NPCI has managed to convince the government to increase the subsidy (UPI) last year. Almost Rs 4000 crore in subsidy was released which lifted a lot of fintechs to profitability.We deployed 6.5-7 million PoS speakers. There are several value added services we were able to tap in the last year. How we look at regulation is that it is either come today or tomorrow. If you (sectors) are not getting regulated that means you are not relevant. The fools paradise is that regulator will not come into your sector. If that so, it means your sector is not relevant enough, says Sameer Nigam

We decided we will not built super app, says Sameer Nigam co-founder & CEO, Phonepe

We are not a bank, not NBFC, we are not an AMC. Different parts of payments segment is getting regulated. We decided we will not built super app. Lot of discussion around it back in 2019. The only super app that works globally is wechat. I dont think india will mirror that at all. Here, people want different apps for everything. As of last summer we restuctured the organization and we have a separate CEOs for different offerings. We restuctured the organisation last year with CEO for different offerings. We call ourselves as PhonePe group of companies instead of super app.

We shouldn't compare to China. We are way behind. We have a longer way to go in the evolution cycle. I was there last month and saw driverless cars. We have potholes to worry about.

We all sit on boards. Nobody questions anything when new rounds are happening. Before you IPO, you have to be sure your central business model is mature and scalable.

There is actually a lack of good assets. There is a fundamental mismatch between assets in the public market and the appetite.India is one of the toughest ecosystems to generate profit, says Prashanth Prakash, partner, Accel

Users do pay for value. It's not as if Indian users don't pay at all. India is the largest market among all other markets in terms of scale of paying users, says Rohan Nayak of Pocket FM

Fundraises are more of an outcome. The input is the effort the team has put in building a new category of audio series. When you are just getting started, you are free to do anything and don't have any baggage. When you raise funding rounds, you have more responsibilities. But for us, nothing changes on a daily basis, says Rohan Nayak, Pocket FM

Working to solve commute issues and decongest roads in key cities Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, says Pavan Guntupalli, Rapido

One of the most exciting things we are working on is how do you use Gen AI to create more value for our writers, in the sense that, fundamentally, what we are seeing is that we are in a fundamental shift in sort of shifting the balance to creators to create more high quality content, says Rohan Nayak, Pocket FM

Day before yesterday, we did one lakh swaps in a day. I think that's large enough to tell that stocking can go up and at the same time going almost 15-20% month-on-month. And we have a two lakh customer wait list, says Pulkit Khurana, Battery Smart

The only way you can build loyalty is we keep building more user value. And that's what we have seen working time and again. The value proposition that you are offering to your users maybe six months ago, it's not valid anymore. So you need to keep it dynamic

The fact is that we are seeing a big uptick in the way customers are adopting our technologies, as we integrate Gen AI into our products.From a creativity standpoint, we are seeing almost a 40 percent improvement in productivity. Because it enables, from what took them almost five weeks to go to market, they're able to do that within a week, says Ajay Joseph, Head of Sales Channel & SMB, Digital Media India & SA

The way we see it is the Gen AI is truly a use case for AI where Gen AI has really brought to life the simplicity of being able to use technology without necessitating to have great amounts of tech.

Our primary objective is to build up great tech capabilities which can be leveraged by different cohorts of customers. And we have a fairly large partner ecosystem, which actually helps customers, be able to consume Gen AI products to MSMEs.

Most of the players are profitable in the coworking space. And I certainly see that in next three-five years, you will see five to seven IPOs in our space. Hopefully including us, says Rishi Das, co-founder, IndiQube

GCCs certainly are doing very well. IT services is also doing well equally, you can say broadly, it's a 25% each mix: Startups, GCC, IT services companies, others. When you come to a place like Bangalore, startups have a much larger share in that, says Rishi Das, co-founder, IndiQube

If you look at many midcap IT companies, they are not present in many cities. TCS, Infosys, the Big Five IT companies were pretty much present in all big cities. So we are seeing a lot of growth coming from midcap companies like Persistent.

Office spaces have seen a massive disruption. Work is going where people are. So I think that is a big shift, and what it has led to a lot of intra city offices, says Rishi Das, Co-Founder, IndiQube

Need and demand from the private sector is there (for spacetech solutions), but it's more global. Not enough demand yet from India.It's coming up gradually, By 2026 we might see a space tech unicorn says Awais Ahmed, CEO, Pixxel Space

In the future, think about the private space sector as an aviation sector. When we started aviation, we didn't have any infrastructure. Similarly, as space companies grow, we will start launching more and more satellite, says Anirudh Sharma of CEO of Digantara

Few talent is going out of ISRO to the (private) industry, but it's also having this chain effect where we are hiring more and more people and giving more opportunities for Indians. We have people in our company who shifted back from abroad and are working in India, says Gaurav Seth, CEO of Piersight Space.

Awais Ahmed, CEO of Pixxel Space on challenges in the space sector: I would say the challenge does exist to take it beyond selling to the government, and how do you get it to other enterprises and eventually to people. I would say the challenge does exist to take it beyond selling to the government, and how do you get it to other enterprises and eventually to people.

When we see other markets, like the US and China, a Rs 1,000 crore fund is not comparable. A Rs 10,000 crore is also not enough for the space sector, says Anirudh Sharma, CEO of Digantara

The regulator knows us a bank that works closely with fintechs. The key thing for regulator is whether we know the customer? As a regulated entity, when half a billion transactions a day, do we have sufficient visibility on transaction patterns, says Naveen Chaluvadi, Yes Bank

We are a tech-first firm, we were the first to collaborate on account aggregator and last to get the license. Regulator wants to encourage more greenfield players more than older players, says Sabyasachi Goswami, CEO, Perfios

The biggest understanding among fintech is that ‘tech’ is not as important as ‘fin’. Regulation takes up more than 50% of their time. Moving fast and breaking things is an unfortunate paradox. It may work for SaaS but not for fintech, says Siddarth Pai, Founding Partner, 3one4 Capital

We are not looking for a single product approval from RBI, is broad based. When we launch a product for customers, we bounce the idea with regulator. We share the ecosystem feedback with the regulator, says Noopur Chaturvedi, CEO, NBBL.

AI has tremendous opportunities in our space. I think one excellent use-case of AI in our industry is that any invoice that comes in early, you will be able to extract data and create the invoice automatically, says

Nabendu Das, Chief of Engineering, Tally Solutions

We are working on AI for SMEs. We believe that AI is a very, very powerful technology but it hasn't come up yet for SMEs, says Nabendu Das, Chief of Engineering, Tally Solutions

You can create your first invoice within the first five minutes using Tally. Fundamentally, technology is at the center of the success of Tally, says Nabendu Das, Chief of Engineering

Lalit Keshre says overtaking competition is a 'win-win' for the industry," says Groww's CEO Lalit Keshre. He emphasizes that the primary role of regulators is to protect investors, aligning with Groww's shared goals. Keshre states, "The primary purpose of regulators is to protect the investors. We share that goal."

Back in 2019 when we attempted a fundraiser, we didn't get enough traction. We went back and started looking at daily P&L. And every day we started making incremental improvements and within a year of that, we actually turned profitable

Ishendra Agarwal, Giva says D2C brands who do not have their own marketing channels or want to explore marketing channels, realizing that we have access to consumers in physical space, said can we collaborate with you? And we see that as going to create traction

We started online because of the high capex. Today to go deep in Bengaluru, offline will do the job. Bengaluru consumes billion dollars of meat and we have 5 percent market share. Roughly 70 % of customers who walk into our offline stores are new customers

Giva o-founder Ishendra Agarwal says when it comes to purchase, what we realized is online is not enough. The online ecosystem is not that important, especially for categories that people want to try a product before they buy

Ankit Nagori of Curefoods says in many tier two, tier three, and tier four cities, there isn’t enough order density to support purely online commerce, especially in smaller cities with populations around five lakh. When we were building brands, our online-first approach helped us gauge demand density. For large cities, we adopt a dual strategy—launching online first and then expanding offline. In smaller cities, we implement an omnichannel approach from day one."

Mithun Sacheti talks of how most investors are smart and well-educated, making informed bets. However, as operator VCs, we offer something different—industry knowledge and empathy. We understand what founders go through, which is a crucial aspect of being a successful VC.

Girish Mathrubootham says, as operators, we have lived through or learned from the failures of being a founder. That’s the unique insight we bring as Operator VCs. While we might not always have extensive market knowledge or other metrics, that’s a blind spot we’re continuously learning about.

Girish Mathrubootham:

"Freshworks gave me a chance to believe that we can build a product globally from India. I started FC Madras, a world-class youth football academy, with the dream of sending a Messi from Madras someday. The purpose I discovered is to be a small catalyst, both in the startup ecosystem and in the sports world. I don’t view my work at Freshworks, FC Madras, or Together Fund as separate journeys; they all contribute to a common purpose."

Mithun Sacheti:

"I had the luxury of saying no to Accel!"

Freshworks' founder Girish Mathrubootham says that most of the [startup] founders often come from a middle class background and have never seen a huge amount of money in their bank accounts.

I cannot equate the work that Girish did to the work I did. I've always looked up to Girish Matrubootham when it comes to scaling. I learned to develop a product roadmap from Girish and how he built Freshworks, says Mithun Sacheti

Mithun Sacheti

"In no means can I equate the work that Girish did to the work I did. I have always looked up to Girish (Mathrubootham). When it comes to scaling, I was inspired by him. I learned to develop a product roadmap from Girish and how he built Freshworks."

Girish Mathrubootham

"It is not about Chennai or Bangalore. Most of the founders come from a middle-class background. We have never seen huge amounts of money in our bank accounts. When someone offers to invest, founders should take it and ensure their priority expenses are met so they can build big."

• No one, including landlords, believed 10-minute deliveries would work ever
•  What keeps me up at night: we have an opportunity to build something exceptional

The Moneycontrol Conclave comes at a time when the momentum is back in the startup world. But what does it takes to persist, to reset and to rebuild in good times and bad? What does it take to play the long game and negotiate the regulatory landscape? These are some of the big themes we will cover today at the conclave"

- ⁠Nalin Mehta, Managing Editor, Moneycontrol

Adit Palicha arrives at the red carpet

VT Bharadwaj of A91 partners in the house. He will be interviewing Zepto co-founder and CEO Aadit Palicha

The event will feature insights from prominent investors, including Sumer Juneja of SoftBank, Sanjay Nayar of Sorin, Shailesh Lakhani of Peak XV, Kitty Agarwal of Info Edge Ventures, Prashanth Prakash and Anand Daniel of Accel, and VT Bharadwaj of A91 Partners. These industry leaders will share their perspectives on the current market and investment opportunities.

The event features a stellar lineup, including policymakers Priyank Kharge and Amitabh Kant, alongside startup giants like Sriharsha Majety (Swiggy), Sahil Barua (Delhivery), and Sameer Nigam (PhonePe). Top venture capitalists, such as Sumer Juneja (SoftBank), Sanjay Nayar (Sorin), and Shailesh Lakhani (Peak XV), offer insights into what they seek in today's market. The event also explores AI's impact on industries, with a special ‘heart-to-heart’ session between Narayana Health founder Dr. Devi Shetty and his son Viren Shetty.

Moneycontrol Startup Conclave aims to highlight the resilience and determination of entrepreneurs and their unwavering commitment to overcoming obstacles. The event will feature a combination of keynote speeches, panel discussions, and inspiring talks from both global and Indian experts in the fields of policy, venture capital, and entrepreneurship