Takeaways from SAP Startup Social this August

This month, the SAP Startup Social, which took place in Bengaluru in early August, has drawn a lot of attention to the startup ecosystem promoting discussions on innovation and technology. The event brought together technology startups, entrepreneurs, investors, tech honchos, and curious employees. Attendees had a chance to listen to the likes of Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal and viral video game Angry Birds creator Peter Vesterbacka, as they spoke about the challenges of their startup journeys.

“I think in the early stage it is very important to iterate quickly and fail fast,” Yourstory quoted Bansal.

Peter Vesterbacka spoke about how Angry Birds became an expanding consumer brand and one of the most successful gaming companies in the world with four billion downloads. Vesterbacka, who is also passionate about education was quoted by Yourstory, “Education is actually the second biggest market on the planet. It is second only to food and is a $6.3 trillion market, which is a lot of money. As education in Finland is the best, then why don’t we apply Finnish thinking to it and reduce it to half? The idea is to achieve better results by doing less, which makes it efficient.”

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Other crowd pleasers at the event were Rajiv Srivatsa, Co-Founder of Urban Ladder; Jitendra Gupta, MD, PayU India, and Co-founder, Citrus Pay; and P C Mustafa, Founder, and iD Foods.

SAP Startup Studio, which is a two-year-old startup accelerator programme, introduces a year-long end-to-end engagement platform for startups to help them grow. During the event, SAP made known the 16 startups from the second cohort of its accelerator programme, SAP Startup Studio, who had now graduated.

Currently, six of them are creating co-innovation products with SAP, and some are working on the SAP Leonardo platform, which brings together emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, advanced analytics, and Blockchain with the aim of finding solutions for specific business problems.

Yourstory quoted Dilipkumar Khandelwal, President of SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP SE, and Managing Director, SAP Labs India, as he spoke at the event, “The Startup Studio perfectly fits into our philosophy of fostering entrepreneurship and promoting innovation for growth and development. We are tirelessly working to nurture and build a strong startup ecosystem in India by providing the best-in-class infrastructure, expert mentorship, and networking opportunities startups need to become successful. As part of that effort, Startup Social gives startups direct access to meaningfully engage with leading thinktanks and India’s investor community.”

SAP Startup Social is one of the influential corporate startup accelerator-driven summits in India, which was launched in 2016. This annual forum creates an accessible platform for several participants of the startup ecosystem in India. This year, the event saw participation from more than 600 ecosystem participants, 50 investors, and 32 CIOs. Many representatives from the venture capital circle were also seen this year.

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Yourstory quoted Siddharth Bhatia, VP, Invest India, “Ours is a $2.5 trillion economy. It took 60 years to get the first trillion while the second trillion came in the next eight years. This gives a sense of the pace at which we are growing.”

Also, SAP Startup Studio partner ‘Get in the Ring: Enterprise Challenge’ called out to startups and entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges and business leaders, so that they get a taste of practicing their pitch, receive feedback from mentors, and make contact with like-minded peers.