Top political, business leaders discuss startups

NEW DELHI: Top political and business leaders including French President François Hollande, Cisco executive chairman John Chambers, Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal and Alphabet’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt discussed the future of startups and the value they can add.

Also present at the meeting in Paris on Thursday were Robin Li, cofounder of China’s Baidu, Oliver Samwer, founder of Rocket Internet, Jimmy Wales, cofounder of Wikipedia, Yuanqing Yang, CEO of Lenovo, and Mathias Doepfer, CEO of German media group Axel Springer, who discussed strategies around the digital transformation of societies and other related topics.

The meeting was hosted ahead of the launch of the Viva Summit in Paris, which is touted as the “Davos for Startups” and is focused on bringing together players in the digital space. As part of the Viva Summit, over 5,000 startups will showcase themselves to leaders, investors and academicians, as per the event’s website.