LN Gupta, Ramesh Abhisehk & Prafulla Samal

New Delhi: Fifteen Startups from Odisha participated in the TiEcon Delhi 2017, a premier entrepreneurship conference with theme “Dare to Dream”, held here on Friday.

The Startups belong to diverse sectors like health care, IT, biotechnology, electronics and services, and  food processing . They got the advantage of being mentored by eminent professionals and successful entrepreneurs like  Hitesh Oberoi, MD and CEO Naukri.com, Padmaja Ruparel, Co-founder India Angel Network,  Prajakta Raut, Founding Partner Growth Labs, Atul Dhawan, Partner Deloitte,  Rajnish Kapoor, President India Operations, DMI,  Raman Roy, Chairman, Nasscom. The Startups got added advantage of displaying their product and services at the ‘Odisha Pavilion’ which MSME Department has put up at the conference site.

The Odisha MSME minister, Prafulla Samal, invited the Startups entrepreneurs to setup their business in Odisha. He said that Odisha is moving ahead with a mission to setup 1000 Startups and with vision to emerge amongst the top  three Startup Hubs in India by 2020.

The MSME additional chief secretary, LN Gupta, while making presentation on the journey of Startup Mission Odisha during ‘Session on “Startup Revolution at the State level” , said  that during last 9 months 152 Startups cutting across all sectors and 4 Incubators have been recognised under the Startup Odisha Initiative. He added that the 15 out of 152 Startups (10%) in Odisha are led by women entrepreneurs. Startup Odisha is providing highest benefits in the country in terms of monthly allowance of Rs 20, 000 per month, product development and marketing assistance up to Rs 15 Lakhs, and need based assistance to Startups and capital grant up to Rs 5 crore to incubators.

Union secretary DIPP Ramesh Abhishek, who chaired the session, lauded the efforts of Odisha government in promoting Startups and innovators. Gujrat, AP, Punjab and Uttarakhand were the other states who participated in the conference.

Startup entrepreneurs like  Deepak Sahoo, Founder of Arrelic Reliability, Shruti Kanta Mishra, Founder, Maiestas Technologies, who attended the TiEcon said that the conference gave an opportunity for pitching to investors, networking with investors and clients and over all possibility of business enhancement.