TiE Mumbai Organizes The 5th Edition Of Smashup For Start-Ups


The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) Mumbai will hold its 5th edition of its flagship event start-up SmashUp for early stage Start-ups in Mumbai on Saturday, September 12th, 2015. This will help them learn the “art of building successful ventures from eminent mentors andother fellow entrepreneurs”.

SmashUp is TiE Mumbai’s startup event that endures a total Startup & Entrepreneurial democracy Philosophy! This event is all about the startups and is conceived for and by the startup entrepreneurs. Smashup today has gained the reputation of being the platform for the new bloods to come learn & collaborate and seek help from maturing and growing startups. Startups from Technology, Healthcare, Food, Media & Entertainment and the Financial Services space come here to articulate their ideas, business plans and share their journey, so far!

The reason why the TiE SmashUp has grown over the years and attracts a lot of startups is due to the un-conference concept of peer learning from contemporaries. 

It has been designed as a platform for the startup + by the startup. Which means, #TiESmashup will be devoid of:

a. Big Boys: Early stage entrepreneurs are invited to speak, no VCs no big boy talks

b. 50,000 feet overviews: Early stage entrepreneurs tend to give you a 2,000 ft overview

c. Presentations/Gyan: The focus is on story telling format with Startup Tales

d. NO Suits: It’s a serious rule to maintain the ambience and energy

Co-hosted by VC Karthic & Lavin Mirchandani, the theme for this year's SmashUp is 'The Journey of an Entrepreneur', with the panels centering on the actual life cycle of a startup and with selected speakers to match the bill. To keep the entrepreneurial streak in you always on the go, one can look forward to a range of events from speed-dating the investors, panel discussions, start-up tales, educative workshops, awards session, interviews with accelerators (registrations for which are still open) and food trails. 

Speed dating the investors: A curated event where start-ups get a one on one opportunity to pitch their product to potential investors followed by a 1 minute question and answer session (Entries closed on Aug 24th). Some of the investors who will feature in this session are Nexus – Sandeep Singal, Matrix - Rajinder Balaram, Mayfield – Vishal Dixit & Sweta Tiwari, Nirvana - Rajan Mehr, CIO AngelNetwork  - Sanjay Mehta & Bindia Maheshwari, LGTVP - Rajat Arora, Indian Angel’s & Mumbai Angel’s  to name a few.

 Opening Remark: The event will open with Dhanpal Jhaveri, President TiE Mumbai, & Managing Partner & CEO of Everstone Capital Advisors

365 days of an entrepreneur: The panel will investigate what startups need to do right in the first crucial 365 days by calling upon entrepreneurs who are new and past their first year namely founder of Taskbob,  Aseem Khare, founder of Diabeto, Shreekant Pawar and founder of Coupon Dunia, Sameer Parwani who won the SmashUp Award himself, 4 years ago.

Scale, Sales and all that Jazz: This will focus on start-ups that have just gone about raising money, how to spend that money and hit that $1mil to $10mil revenue mark, presided over by founder of OML, Vijay Nair, founder of  DocEngage , Ahimanikya Satapathy, and founder of Holachef, Saurabh Saxena.

The $100 million journey: This will talk about what every entrepreneur aims for and how to reach it by listening to entrepreneurs who have already hit that big mark learning from their wise words.Gain insight on the mindset that one needs and the cultural shift to become that big an entity. This panel will be led Kunal Shah, founder of Freecharge.

Start-up Tales: Post the panel discussions, the young and budding entrepreneurs can delight in the start-up stories in other words start-up tales of visionaries like Haptik founder - Akrit Vaish, Truly Madly by Sachin Bhatia as they trace their journeys which included surpassing all hurdles and standing where they are today.

Workshops: Participants can enroll in exciting educative workshops like Legal & Compliance for startups, Digital marketing for startups, Financial Modelling & Valuation for startups, and a Foodtech panel/workshop, considering Technology and food are now growing synonymous to each other.

The Smasher Award:  The participants who had applied earlier are shortlisted by a jury which will comprise of veterans like KR Menon, Microsoft for Startups, Nitin Bawankule, Director - Ecommerce, Retail, Online Classifieds, Technology, Education and Government at Google India, Ajit Nagral, Serial Entrepreneur & Investor. Selected from over 175+ participants, upto 10 will be given a chance to pitch their product to an open jury and an open audience. The audience will be allowed a say in the matter too in the form of squishy smiley balls which can be thrown at every contestant. The balls are equivalent to likes. The more the balls the more the likes! (Registrations closed on Aug 12th) 

The Accelerator zone: These sessions allows you to get interviewed by the biggest minds in the world. Spinta, the first Silicon Valley Accelerator to have entered India will be a part of this event interviewing participants, nurturing their ideas and providing viable solutions to grow their business.  The others being, Chrysalis, and ISDI (Registrations will close on Sept 9th)

Start-up Food trail: Food stalls from budding food entrepreneurs will be setup at the TiESmashUp. Not only will attendees get to sample some of their creations but investors will also be walking around specifically tasting what's on offer. 

From 260 participants in 2012, the numbers have grown to a whopping 600 different stakeholders of the ecosystem (startups & entrepreneurs) participating in this event . “SmashUp has grown over the years and is the place for new startup entrepreneurs to come have fun, test their ideas & get a peek into an Entrepreneurs journey. This year the SmashUp features interesting set of speakers, investors, accelerators all of who are hungry for the big kill! If you think you have a great idea and want to build out the next big organization, then SmashUp is the Place to be….”  Amit Mookim – TiE Board Member & Country Principal of IMS Consulting Group, South Asia.

If you are a start-up with a big dream, here's your place to be!

 When: Saturday, September 12th, 2015

Timings: 8.30 am - 7.00 pm

Where: VMCC Auditorium, IIT Bombay, Powai

Registration link: http://bit.ly/1NGpNGU For further details log on to http://tiesmashup.org

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