I attended the TiE Nagpur event which was held on Feb 2-3. Prof. C.K. Prahalad was the keynote speaker. His talks are always extremely thought provoking.
He talked about India @75 and how entrepreneurs (in the context of TiE) can make a difference to this vision. He was very clear that we must focus on innovation to overcome the severe constraints likely to be faced in India the need for building products that can be sold at a low price point, low R&D budgets, poor infrastructure, etc.
He had a fascinating example of the smokeless choolah built by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in partnership with BP.
I also was a speaker at the My Story session on Feb 3. I spoke about the history of Persistent and some of the challenges that entrepreneurs are likely to face when scaling up. The audience was very enthusiastic and I got lots of questions.
I also had the opportunity to listen to R. Sriram from Crossword, Sanjiv Bhikchandani from Naukri.com and Mahesh Moorthy, the Angel Investor. All of their stories were fascinating.
I visited our Persistent office in Nagpur and spent some time looking at the demos and talking to our team there. I was able to meet my in-laws as well. Even though short, it was a very good trip.
– Anand
