Last Year in Jan 2023, Rajeev Shorey asked me to join COMSNETS conference. It was in its 15th year and had already established itself as a premier conference for Communication Systems, Networking and Tech in general with a global following and participation. I was amid a career transition and was not sure if joining the event at this stage was the best idea. However, it sounded like an exciting opportunity to meet academic and industry leaders and share ideas. It turned out to be that and much more. With the focus across various deep tech areas, the entrepreneurial spirit was evident across several discussions.
The idea of adding an Entrepreneur Summit as part of COMSNETS was hatched at last year's event by the steering committee members ( Rajeev Shorey , Giri Mandyam, Uday Desai) and the chair for the inaugural edition of this summit, Prof. Somali Chaterji. When they extended the invitation to me to be part of the organizing committee for this event, I knew it was an opportunity too compelling to pass up. Since then, it has been a rewarding journey in conceptualizing the summit lining up speakers and agenda along with Somali Chaterji and my other fellow co-chairs.
The eventual summit on Jan 5th, 2024 turned out to be everything that we had hoped for and some more. We were delighted to have Ms. Tulika Pandey from MEITY deliver the inaugural talk for the summit. India has leap-frogged other nations in Digital India initiatives in several areas and the credit goes to a large degree to organizations such as MEITY, for recognizing that the government must play a key role to facilitate a thriving innovation/entrepreneurship ecosystem. So, having Ms. Tulika Pandey open the event was very apt.
Rahul Narayan shared the Founder's perspective, as a serial entrepreneur, from his journey at Team Indus and his current stealth venture, aimed at addressing the urban mobility challenges. We heard from Shiv Saini from Adobe Research about research focus in the industry and how that can be used to facilitate an entrepreneurial eco-system and form an industry/research and entrepreneurial nexus. We heard legal perspectives from Suhrid Wadekar as part of a recorded talk.
The afternoon was kicked off by our chair, Somali Chaterji, donning her other hat as the Founder and CEO at KeyByte sharing the Founder's perspective. For my loyal followers, you all know that driving innovation and guiding other entrepreneurs is very much core to our "why" at Venturis Group Inc. So, I ofcourse could not pass up the opportunity without sharing our perspectives through a talk on "From Idea to Reality: Navigating the Startup Journey".
My former colleague from Cisco and the head for Cisco for Startups, Sruthi Kannan joined us and delivered an inspiring talk about the opportunities for innovation that she sees every day and how "Cisco for Startups" is unlocking the full potential of such innovation by creating startup partnerships with Cisco platform.
We heard from Srujan Akula, Co-Founder and CEO at The Modern Data Company about his entrepreneurial journey. I have known Srujan for a long time. We were part of the same cricket team for several years. While I have been close to his journey over the years, this 28-minute conversation provided me so many valuable insights and lessons in entrepreneurship. As one of our followers shared with me after watching this conversation: "This is very inspiring. More People must hear this conversation!!". This conversation is available as a podcast episode for our podcast "Venturis Stories". So, tune in - you are bound to learn some very valuable lessons!!
We had saved the best for the last. The day concluded with an awesome panel of Venture Capitalists (Samir Kumar: Athera Venture Partners, Anupam Rastogi: Emergent Ventures, Naganand Doraswamy: Ideaspring Capital), Government Perspective (Ms. Tulika Pandey) and Founder Perspective (Rahul Narayan) having an open discussion about the entrepreneur ecosystem, challenges, and opportunities. It was an engrossing hour with straight from the heart sharing of perspectives and ideas.
I am looking forward to making this an annual event and build upon the success of the inaugural edition, while applying the lessons learnt. Sky is the limit on where we can take this, and I am very excited to be part of driving the direction for the future years. Stay Tuned!!
Excited to be part of the Inaugural Entrepreneur Ignite Summit at COMSNETS!! Sharing the summary of the day!!