Jaipur: Startup investors to meet entrepreneurs

JAIPUR: Over 20 startup investors are flying into Jaipur next month to meet entrepreneurs and possibly fund their ventures. TiE Rajasthan has been evaluating and shortlisting startups from various incubation centres who could meet the investors with their business ideas at the TiE Smash Up event slated to take place from September 16-17 in the city.
Ravi Modani, president of TiE Rajasthan, said the investors coming to participate in the event have cumulative assets under management of $3.5.
"Majority of them are early-stage investors. Early-stage fund availability is key to create the buzz and optimism," said Modani.
Naming a few, Modani said investors like Nexus Venture Partners, 100X.VC, Titan Capital, IvyCap Ventures, and Fluid Ventures among others will meet the startup entrepreneurs and evaluate for investments. TiE Rajasthan has already evaluated over 200 startups in the past eight weeks who applied for Smash Up speed dating event.
Sanjay Yadav, convenor of the event said, "We have reached out to incubation centres like StartupOasis, Atal Incubation centres in Banasthali Vidyapith, Manipal University, JK Lakshmipat University, Catalyst, JECRC Incubation Centre, MNIT, BITS Pilani, NIAM, and IIT Jodhpur.
Yadav said, "We now have 20 startups after deep dive sessions. Our work is still half done and after spending 40 hours of evaluation spread over two months, we are able to reach halfway mark. We expect to select 40- 50 startups for the Smashup day and we still need to evaluate another 300 startups to get final 40-50 eligible startups."
As per representatives of TiE-Rajasthan, while growth-and late-stage funding has dried up, the pre-seed and seed stage funding had grown three times. The investors who used to fund series-A earlier, moved to seed-stage and started giving first or second stage cheque as an institutional investor.
Sharad Bansal, organizing committee member, said, "A location like Rajasthan or Jaipur needs pre-seed or seed-stage investors which will encourage the more and more youths to take up entrepreneurship. The more entrepreneurs we have, the better will be the ecosystem, leading to potential, scalable, and viable startups."