40 start-ups, investors to jam in a 10-hour session

More than 40 start-ups and investors will on Saturday come together in a 10-hour session to share their experiences, as India readies a policy for the new-age companies.

Founders of Flipkart, Snapdeal, Paytm, Ola, Quikr, Zomato and Softbank are expected to participate in the event. At the end of the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will join in for a 90-minute interaction with the participants at the capital’s primary conference venue, Vigyan Bhavan.   

Modi will get the maximum chunk of the session time. Softbank founder and Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son will get the next biggest slot of 35 minutes, in the first interaction of the day. WeWork founder Adam Neumann has a Q&A session slotted for 30 minutes and Uber founder Travis Kalanick will speak for 25 minutes. In the inaugural session, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has been allotted 20 minutes and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman 10 minutes. Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) Secretary Amitabh Kant, the brain behind the programme, has only three minutes for himself for the welcome address. In tune with the spirit of the event, start-up poster boys such as Makemytrip founder Deep Kalra and serial entrepreneur Ravi Gururaj will be among the moderators. TV anchors from private channels have also been roped in for the day.

Healthcare seems to be the focus area, with a session dedicated to the theme. Other interesting sessions include ‘’Show Me The Money’’, where Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal will sit in a panel discussion with minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha, among others. Flipkart is known for its fund-raising spree and has raised close to $4 billion, based on which it has been valued at more than $15 billion now. There will also be a session on women start-ups with participation from founders of Kaaryah, Mydala, Letsventure, Culture Alley, Sheroes and Yourstory.

Some prominent names who would be part of the panels include Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl, Paytm's Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Ola's Bhavish Agarwal, Quikr's Pranay Chulet and Zomato's Deepinder Goyal.

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Some entrepreneurs expected at the meet

• Masayoshi Son
  CEO, Softbank
   
• Adam Neumann
  CEO, WeWork
   
• Travis Kalanick
  CEO, Uber
   
• Sachin Bansal
  Executive Chairman, Flipkart
   
• Kunal Bahl
  CEO, Snapdeal
   
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma
  Founder, Paytm
   
• Deep Kalra
  CEO, Makemytrip
   
• Bhavish Aggarwal
  CEO, Ola
   
• Pranay Chulet
  CEO, Quikr
   
• Deepinder Goyal
  CEO, Zomato