To do business in India you have to start with 1) be in India and 2) know the right people and 3) build a personal relation to the right people. That’s exactly why we organized the first «Nordic Meetup» in Mumbai. Our first startup evening gathered 50+ of the right people.
We connected startups, business angels, corporates, VC´s, organizations and officials. Because the magic can only happen when the right persons meet. Together we have now established a meeting place that I think has a good potential to boost Nordic-India startup business in the time to come.
I am sure I broke my own personal record of interesting people met in one evening. I hope everyone else also added important connections to their Nordic-India network.
We invited 3 speaker with waste experience from the Indian startup ecosystem to discuss on collaboration opportunities: Bipin Shah -Micro VC at Titan Capital (SnapDeal), Poyni Bhatt -CEO at SINE IIT Bombay, Akshit Gupta -Co-founder and Angel Investor in FundTonic. Jignesh Jain moderated the session.
Very inspiring and entertaining «Nordic talks» by Noi Cecilia Oldne -Sweden (Photo above), Marie Ahlmann-Ohlsen -Denmark (photo below), Inger Solberg -Norway, Caroline Espegard Norway and Hampus Olsson from Sweden. All sharing their valuable experience and insight from their India-entrepreneurship journeys.
Arun Sharma, U.C. Berkeley (Photo above) launched Nordic Hub Indias Smart Village Program, aiming at identifying Nordic innovations to help solve challenges found in 500 000 villages in India. We will of course start with a few, but the scaling-up possibilities are enormous.
3 game-changing Nordic-India startups pitched at the event
Eirik Lerum Vigerust from Ultycycle (Photo above), want to transform e-waste to cash, Nitesh Shail from the Norwegian startup Aquasolis Global want to provide clean water to everyone with their innovative solution and finally Shrushti Runwal form the Reash, want to create an Uber for trash. Gamification of trash collection will enable consumers to turn trash into points and value.
Did I mention that even Bollywood Star and entrepreneur Sushant Singh Rajput joined us to explore Nordic-India startup relations at the reception hosted by Norwegian Consul General Ann Ollestad at her residence? I guess I did.
I think you want to see more photos from the event? Its your lucky day, just click to go to:
The Nordic Hub Facebook page
The Nordic Hub Instagram account
Bottom line, what are we trying to do?
We are simply trying to connect Nordic-India startups with opportunities.
That is not necessarily simple. But with innovative solutions made by born-global startups, business angels not only investing their money, but also their knowledge and networks, with our waste network – also including research and huge corporates, we sure think we will create success stories.
Do you want to know more on our Nordic Hub programs, events, meetups and more?
Just head to the website to stay tuned: www.nordichub.in
