Leap to Unicorn Bootcamp Begins | Leadership Insights with Sanjeev Bikhchandani

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Startup founders have a long, hard, and often lonely road ahead of them. Finding the right partners and core teams can be a challenge for many, as can be a lack of mentorship. Many founders also struggle to understand legalities, funding, technology, intellectual property, data protection, or the million and one things that a startup founder needs to have a working knowledge of, but cannot possibly manage all alone. In a nutshell, a startup takes a village.

This is precisely where Leap to Unicorn, a pioneering initiative by IDFC FIRST Bank in collaboration with Network18 and CNBC-TV18, steps in. Now in its second season, Leap to Unicorn is nurturing a brand new crop of would-be unicorns. Of the thousands that applied, 600 startups moved on to the next stage: bootcamps. Beginning April 15th, these founder teams have participated in a series of 17 exclusive virtual boot camps spread out strategically across four weeks. And who better to kick things off than Info Edge founder, Sanjeev Bikhchandani?

In his session titled 'Leadership Utopia', Mr Bikhchandani covered a variety of topics ranging from hiring strategies to breaking even to the value of learning by doing, and the immense learning that comes from muddling through the tough times.

The conversation opened with a recap of his early days as an entrepreneur, where he recounted that his motivation wasn't to build a large business, but rather, to be an independent entrepreneur. In the early 90s, when India's startup ecosystem was nowhere near as vibrant as it is today, Mr Bikhchandani was able to find the right talent to go along with his vision. What is truly commendable is how many of these early joinees are still part of his companies today. "Founders have to be talent magnets," he mused. "People have to be able to believe in you and join you." He also noted that it is the 'atypical' ones who tend to join startups at early stages; the typical ones opting for the traditional career path that large organisations offer.

When asked about evaluating the strength of ideas, or even finding the right ones, Mr. Bikhchandani spoke at length about the criticality of understanding one's customers, and the problems they face. "Customer insight, unsolved problems, that's the kind of thing that drove us to our successful business ideas."

From his early days with Naukri, he gave several examples of how their clear vision and conviction on the core value proposition of the business allowed them to keep things afloat even when situations looked dire. He went into some detail on the non-standard approaches Naukri took towards marketing, given that they had no marketing budget. These off-beat approaches worked, and Naukri soon had the brand recall value that most wouldn't think possible without a dedicated marketing agency. "It's useful not to have money. You work harder."

He made a strong case for frugality and shared his special insight on when and how to source funding. "The best time to raise money is when the investor comes to you, and not the other way around." He urged founders to focus on creating value, and pushing to generate profits early, as opposed to scaling at all costs. "Dream big, but start small. You don't know if your dreams are realistic or not, so if you start big, you'll fail big. Fail small instead, pick yourself back up, and get it right the second time. This way you minimise the cost of learning."

The 600 selected startups have been through four weeks of intensive learning, which they have already begun to apply to their updated pitch decks and video presentations. The teams are racing to share these decks and videos by [date], after which the Leap to Unicorn team will have the herculean task of winnowing this select group down to the Top 100 startups of the second season of Leap to Unicorn. Further down the line, this group of 100 will finally yield the Top 20 finalists.

Fortunately, you too, can follow along on their progress via the Leap to Unicorn website

https://www.moneycontrol.com/LTU

Stay tuned as we share more exciting news and insights from their exciting journey towards becoming India's next crop of unicorns.

Moneycontrol journalists were not involved in the creation of the article.