The ‘soonicorn opportunity’ is the India opportunity, says Times Internet’s Satyan Gajwani
The theme of the next five years will be whether Digital India and Startup India can demonstrate that we can build lasting businesses, said Times Internet Vice Chairman Satyan Gajwani in his keynote at the ET Soonicorns Summit.
The ‘soonicorn opportunity’ is very much the ‘India opportunity’ and signals the market’s enormous potential and ability to build big, disruptive businesses that are sustainable in the long term, said Times Internet Vice Chairman Satyan Gajwani in his inaugural keynote address at the first edition of the ET Soonicorns Summit.
With around 20 different sessions across two days, the ET Soonicorns Summit will serve as a platform for India’s high-growth startups to glean insights on building resilient businesses amidst growing macroeconomic pressures.
“We think the ET Soonicorns Summit is important because, in many ways, the soonicorn opportunity is very much the India opportunity. We are a market with enormous potential and with the ability to create massive, disruptive lasting companies. But we're not quite there yet. The ET Soonicorns Summit is meant to address the very things that are holding us back, and that are on the horizon for this stage of companies that we face today,” Gajwani said.
Watch Day 1 of ET Soonicorns Summit here:
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Through a series of investor insights sessions, unicorn playbooks, and sector roundtables, the event will foster learnings on a series of pertinent themes including how startups can navigate a tough funding landscape, reimagine India’s next Techade, build disruptive tech solutions for India and the world, and create lasting businesses with solid fundamentals.
“Over the last five years, India has established that we have the potential to build really big businesses. The next phase – and perhaps the theme of the next five years – will be whether Digital India and Startup India can demonstrate that we can build lasting businesses,” Gajwani said.
And this, Gajwani noted, will come from building businesses that are fundamentally and economically sustainable, that are run with best practices with established governance and institutionalism in the way that decisions are made. The two-day long virtual event will also feature venerated names of the Indian startup ecosystem, including Shark Tank India judges Anupam Mittal and Ghazal Alagh, as well as over 30 unicorn and soonicorn founders in various sector roundtables.
The event also features a slew of investors, including Sanjay Swamy, Managing Partner, Prime Venture Partners, Sanjay Nath, Managing Partner, Blume Ventures, Vaibhav Domkundwar, Founder and CEO, Better Capital, Shanti Mohan, Founder and CEO, LetsVenture, Sanjay Mehta, Founder and Partner, 100X.VC, Pankaj Makkar, Managing Director, BII, and Lavanya Ashok, Partner, Trifecta Capital, among others.
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“The ET Soonicorns Summit is not just about a summit. It is a broader initiative by the Economic Times. Alongside the summit, there are multiple months of effort and initiatives that are surrounding what we're doing,” said Gajwani.
To further bolster coverage of the themes and ideas being tracked at the summit, the ET Soonicorns initiative will launch a video series on Future Unicorns and Decacorns of India as well as reports and trackers over the next few months, he added.
