PUNE: The newly elected Chapter President Ajay Bhagwat took over from the past President Vineet Patni on January 1, 2024. Like all other TiE chapters across the globe, TiE Pune under Ajay’s leadership will continue to foster Entrepreneurship. Ajay feels that all companies across various sizes need help, not just the young start-ups.
TiE Pune continues to help foster entrepreneurship by building on the five pillars: Inspiring, Teaching, Mentoring, Networking, and Funding.
As one of the founders of TiE Nurture- an intense mentorship program that has been very successful and now being executed in Europe and America, Ajay feels that we need to help build good companies that are making profits and not just chase the topline.
“Yes, we are witnessing a funding winter, but those that are doing well are getting the money. Money chases profits, not just topline or downloads”, said Ajay. In the past 11 years, TiE Nurture has helped over 300+ start-ups of which 150+ have ‘graduated’. We have had several great success stories including Early Salary, Altizon, WalnutApp, FlytBase, and SunShot Technologies, to name a few, who scaled and were able to raise good funding. However, we have been instrumental in helping many smaller ones survive and grow. We consider that to be more important for the ecosystem.
Besides the Nurture program, TiE Pune also targets the student community and encourages them to choose entrepreneurship as a career. This is done by organizing the Biz QuoTiEnt program where students compete with their Business Plans. Last year, Cummins College student, Shalmali Kadu (Innergize) won the Best Women Student award under the TiE University Program.
TiE also has a program specially dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs. “Every year, we have a Global Contest for women entrepreneurs that affords them mentoring by global business leaders, enables worldwide networking, and offers the winner a cash prize. Among the women entrepreneurs who participated in this contest we have had Parul Ganju (Ahammune) and Anuya Nisal (Serigen Medical Products) who won the runner-up and India winner respectively“, said Ajay
While Ajay wears different hats of an entrepreneur and TiE President, he also has worked hard towards creating the MCCIA Electronic Cluster Foundation, a 70 Cr project with the help of the Central and State Governments. “We have succeeded in creating a common testing facility of global standard there that all local companies can use with a cost advantage”, said Ajay
While manufacturing is gathering momentum, propelled by the Govt’s push to make-in-India, the tilt toward tech in the business community continues. We will have to wait and see how these companies perform. I know for a fact that it takes a long time for the manufacturing sector and the connected ecosystem to establish, grow, and dominate.
Ajay’s presidency is ably supported by the Governing Council and the TiE Pune Office staff led by Rashmi Ghosh.
