What do Startups need to do for fundraising?

I am moderating a Panel discussion at Pune Startup Fest 2021 around the topic of fund raising.

Are you a startup founder with queries around #fundraising ?

Join me tomorrow (28th Feb, 2021) at #Pune Startup Fest’21.

I am moderating a panel discussion around the topic “What do Startups need to do for fundraising?”

Pune Startup Fest 2021 is in its third edition, continuing on the success of its second edition last year. In case you don’t know, its a fest organised by students of College of Engineering, Pune (COEP). This year ofcourse, it is happening as a largely virtual fest this year like all other events. In a way it has helped bring together even more and better people together as there are no travel constraints now.

Here are the panelists:
⏯️ Vatsal Kanakiya – CTO 100X.VC

⏯️Piyush Surana – Investment Principal, Tomorrow Capital

⏯️Honey Kithani – Co-founder, StartupsXchange and 10000StartupsIndia

⏯️ Karan Teckchandani – Representative from Equanimity Investments

If you have any questions which you want me to address in the panel discussion, please feel free to add in the comments.

Register here to attend the panel discussion?
https://lnkd.in/dVuumMM

Register here to visit Pune Startup Fest’21?
https://lnkd.in/drEgenU

#fundraisingtips#startups#startupfunding#entrepreneurship#festival#fundingthefuture

Building a fundable pitch deck

As an entrepreneur, I have been making pitch decks for a few years now. While a few of them got funded, a lot of them went into a black hole. In contrast, when I started my new avatar as an angel investor, I started on the other side of the table. Now, every day I see pitch decks from a lot of interesting startups. While almost all of them are doing something really amazing, a lot of the times it doesn’t emerge out of the pitch deck itself.

My Design Thinker friend Atin Kumar heard my rants. And he told me, if I see people are struggling with pitch decks then I should think of a way to help them. That’s where I thought of taking a session on “Building a Fundable Pitch Deck”. We brainstormed a bit and decided to launch a small event. Here is the link to register for the event.

This was two days back ( 3rd Dec, 2019 ). Yesterday something interesting happened.

Ratan Tata posted a pitch deck template on Instagram.

The timing could not be any better 🙂 Here is the link to the template. Now, if Ratan Tata himself shares a pitch deck template for startups, imagine how important it is for your startup!

Getting the template was the easy part. How to follow it for your startup? How to make it work for your pitch?

This is what I am going to cover in the session. If you are a startup in Pune trying to raise funds and are struggling with your pitch deck, please register here and join us on 15th December (Sunday) at Alacrity India Innovation Center, Baner.

Few days to go for GTC 2019

I have always been a Nvidia fan boy, right from my days of assembling PCs in IIT Bombay and selling it to the gaming crowd there. Never though imagined that one day same Nvidia will fuel the Artificial Intelligence revolution.

For the uninitiated Nvidia makes GPUs (Graphical Processing Units) which other than being used heavily for gaming have proved to be a game-changer for Artificial Intelligence, driven by its ability to execute tasks in parallel at a large scale. Practically now GPUs are being leveraged for every kind of heavy number crunching be it in any application which uses Deep Learning or Machine Learning. Nvidia organises GPU Technology Conferences globally, with the main event in San Jose kickstarting the calendar every year.

Naturally when I visited GTC last year at San Jose, I was like ‘Alice in wonderland’ given the sheer scale of event with hundreds of companies from all around the world showcasing the best technologies and applications. Attendees were estimated to be 9000 plus so its easily one of the biggest technology events now. Seeing that I made a promise to myself that next year I will get Innoplexus too there. At the same GTC I came to know about Nvidia’s amazing Inception program and applied for it. We showcased our technology to Nvidia experts and after few rounds we became an Inception program member. It helps startups working in AI and Deep Learning with access to right resources within Nvidia ecosystem. You can read more about the program here. 

We applied for GTC last year in August and after a very elaborate review process got accepted. So, this year I am back at GTC – as a speaker. YAY!!

I want to thank Nvidia for giving the opportunity to present the amazing work of Innoplexus at #gtc19 in San Jose in March. My session title is ‘How To Use GPUs For Faster, Better and Cheaper Drug Development‘. To add to the joy, I have our VP, technology & Innovation, Vatsal Agarwal as well present in another session which is titled  Real-Time Connection-Based Filtering to Improve the Precision of the Search Engine in Life Sciences.

And that’s not it – given our Inception membership Nvidia has also given us a chance to present at Inception theater during the GTC.

If you are even remotely interested in Artificial Intelligence in any form or any of its applications or really want to experience how AI is going to disrupt so many sectors then DO NOT miss this event. Use the code GMSGTC to save 20% on registration. See you around!

My talk at National Level Workshop on Artificial Intelligence at IISER Pune

Meet me at National Workshop on Artificial Intelligence in Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune – happening on 12th Jan 2019. 

This National Workshop on Artificial Intelligence is organized by Srijan.

“SRIJAN” is a non- government organization (NGO) working in the field of entrepreneurship development, industry-institute interaction and technology transfer. Srijan aims at providing motivation, guidance and mentoring for the aspiring entrepreneurs with a specific focus on the students of engineering. Srijan was established in 1996.

Mr.Abhay Jere  Chief innovation officer, Ministry of HRD, Govt. of India will inaugurate the workshop.

I will be talking about “Building the Foundations of AI” covering what one needs to build such systems, what kind of challenges one must prepare to face and how to combine different pieces of technologies like Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Ontologies, Big Data to get Artificial Intelligence into action.

Date: 12th January 2019

Time: 09:00 AM – 06:00 PM

Venue: Lecture Hall Complex, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Dr. Homi Bhabha Road, Ward No. 8, NCL Colony, Pashan, Pune, Maharashtra 411008 ( Google maps link: https://goo.gl/maps/DQ5YNtGibPm ) 

Here is a short video on the same.

AI in Drug Development

Recently I had the opportunity to speak at DataHack Summit 2018 , which is undoubtedly the best event in India now when it comes to analytics and AI. It was organised by Analytics Vidhya which is a fantastic platform for anybody interested in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning or Analytics in general. There were amazing speakers and 1300+ attendees across industries, experience and regions.
My session was about AI in Drug Development where I took few examples where we at Innoplexus are using AI to help global pharmaceutical companies in reducing the time and effort across the different stages of drug development.
Here are my slides – itself made using AI ofcourse 😉
Gaurav Tripathi with Kunal Jain, CEO of Analytics Vidhya