Indian Embassy presses the button for Start-Ups

In a significant move, Indian and German Start-Ups have come together to join hands for exploring synergies for collaboration in the start-up space. German Investors, venture and seed funds have also shown keen interest to provide funding and investment in the Indian Startups. This has come as an outcome of a focused business event organized by the Embassy of India, Berlin on Start-Up India titled Indo-German Start-up Landscape and Opportunities which was held on 25 October 2016 with the support from the Bertelsmann Foundation, the German Start-Up Association and CII. The event, which saw participation of large number of German start-Ups, investors, accelerators and venture funds, helped in providing a common platform to connect Indian and German start-ups and highlighting the significant potential for collaboration.
The event also included special pitching sessions in which a variety of start-ups presented their start-up concept and ideas. Special focus of the event included two panel discussions on topics of “Expectation Mapping to Connect Indo-German Start-Ups and “Bridging the Funding and Innovation gap. A delegation of start-ups from India is currently in Berlin to take part in the event. For next two days, the start-up delegation from India will be meeting various German Start-Ups, investors, seed fund providers and relevant stakeholders with the support of the Indian Embassy and the event partners. Indian start-ups delegation included Mr. TusharAhluwalia (Founder-StalkbuyLove), Mr. ArunprasadDurairaj (Co-Founder-Flintobox)
Mr. VishwajithAdukkadukkam (Co-Founder-Foradian), Mr. NeerajShetty(Founder-Recycle Impact)amongst others.

Mr. Suresh Chitturi, Member CII National Start-Up Council presented the Indian Start-Up landscape and highlighted the support for start-ups available under the Start-Up India Mission of the present Government. He emphasized some of the already existing successful global collaborations such as Perfectday Coffee-shop located at Frankfurt airport which is a truly organicstart-up collaboration between South Indian Coffee Farm and Germany.

Speaking at the event Ambassador Gurjit Singh emphasized that there was need to capitalize on the current focus areas of the Indo-German collaboration such as skill development, education, training, environment etc and to work on developing socially relevant high start-ups in these areas. The German start-ups and investors acknowledged the improved business eco-system in India and expressed greater interest to collaborate with Indian start-ups.

The Event concluded with the release of a special economic publication of the Embassy of India, Germany, India- The Growing Story, which highlights the various ongoing initiatives and National Programs of the Indian Government and how the Indo-German Partnership is surging ahead to realize the immense potential created by these initiatives.

*****

Ambassador Gurjit Singh and delegates releasing the Special Economic booklet

Panel Discussion on Expectation mapping and connecting Indo-German Startups

Panel Discussion on Bridging Innovation and Funding gap