Global Newsletter – April 2019

Dear Members,

TiE is constantly focused on championing the entrepreneurial ecosystem and we have a busy summer planned ahead for all our members at TiE. We will be hosting the first edition of TYE University Pitchfest in May at TiEcon where over 15 teams of University students will compete. In June, we will host the 10th edition of the TYE Global Finals in Boston where 28 teams of High School students will compete. Later, in the month of July, we have the Annual CM Retreat for Charter Members at Dubrovnik (Croatia) where over 130 CMs and families have already signed up.

This month’s newsletter features the TiEcons hosted by TiE Chandigarh, TiE Tampa, and TiE Dubai. It also includes highlights from TiE youth programs – Rice University Business Plan Competition and TiE Grad (hosted by TiE Hyderabad). The TiE Angels program is gaining traction at many of our Chapters and this month we BUFF feature TiE SoCal’s pitchfest where investments of $500,000 were made in 6 startups at Merrybet.

Happy Reading and Warm Regards,
Vijay Menon
Executive Director, TiE Global

In 2011 Ashok Rao – former chairman of TiE Global initiated the partnership with the Rice Alliance, wherein TiE can nominate 2 teams from international universities for automatic entry to the RBPC Finals. In addition to local mentoring, several international and TiE Houston CMs coach the two TiE teams and the team from Rice University.
“The Music of the Night” is sung after the Phantom lures Christine Daaé to his lair beneath the Opera House. He seduces Christine with “his music” of the night, his voice putting her into a type of trance. He sings of his unspoken love for her and urges her to forget the world and life she knew before. The Phantom leads Christine around his lair, eventually pulling back a curtain to reveal a mannequin dressed in a wedding gown resembling Christine. When she approaches it, it suddenly moves, causing her to faint. The Phantom then carries Christine to a bed, where he lays her down and goes on to write his music.

This year Ashok Rao, Vikas Shah (UK), Christian Tidona (Germany), PK Agarwal (Silicon Valley), Hubert Vaz-Nayak, Sunil Pangarkar (TiE Houston), and several others took the time to coach and mentor the teams. TiE Houston Angel Group sponsored an Investment Prize of $100,000 to Spotless Materials, a startup from Penn State University.

RBPC attracts university startup applications from elite universities around the world, including MIT, Northwestern, UCLA and international schools. This year, the two selected teams were from IIT Chennai (Modulus Housing) and University of Mumbai (Symphony Music) by TiE Chennai and TiE Hyderabad respectively. Both teams got automatic entry to the “Top 42 Finalist teams” at RBPC 2019 (rbpc.rice.edu). TiE Global sponsors the team’s visit to the USA to participate in this prestigious competition. All five students were travelling to the US for the first time! Symphony won the People’s Choice Awards. The 2019 winning team this year bagged nearly $700,000 in cash and prizes; while this year’s award total was a record $2.9 million.

TiE Grad Business Idea Tournament, organised by TiE Hyderabad chapter is designed to help engineering & management colleges to build/scale Entrepreneurship Development Zones within their
campuses. This is done through a structured program to guide and mentor students, as well as,
college management on Entrepreneurship. As a part of the program, TiE Charter Member mentors introduced Entrepreneurship to 2600+ students in the entire year.

This year, 10 teams made it to the finale after multiple qualifier rounds, scraping past a rigorous selection procedure that saw 119 teams submitting their entries for the tournament.

The business plans of the 10 finalists catered to several sectors including med-tech, food-tech, emerging technologies among a few. A total of 16 colleges participated in TiE Grad program 2018-19.

Each of the 10 teams at the finale presented their business idea over a 10-minute duration. Beyond the 10-minute pitch, the jury interacted with the teams over a five-minute span, enquiring about the intricacies of the business plans besides offering their suggestions to create a holistic product that worked right for the market.

The winners took away INR 7 Lakhs in prize money under five categories. Overall winners were Vinnan Labs team from BiTS Pilani, Hyderabad and Solar Power Plus team from Vishnu Institute of Technology, Bhimavaram. The best 1-Minute elevator pitch was won by UtorAI from Vardhman College of Engineering, Hyderabad.

The best scalable business model for global markets was bagged by Symphony – for their music sharing app. For the Best Innovative Idea Lighthouse Tech team from Sreenidhi Institute of Science & Technologies, Hyderabad was declared winners. Best Presentation Skills winners were UtorAI for their business idea ‘Modular Open Source Chat Bots’.

TiE Chandigarh recently concluded the 4th edition of TiECon 2019 on 16th February at Indian School of Business, Mohali Campus.

The theme of the event was: Start. Grow. Scale. The event saw a record attendance of 1200+ delegates to the one-day conference from across the region along with 40+ Speakers, 50+ Expo Stalls and 40+ Startups at Startup bazaar.

The attendees were enthralled by power-packed sessions by Shiv Khera (Author & Motivational Speaker); Dr A Velumani of Thyrocare; India’s most famous autorickshaw driver Annadurai; Gopal Pillai of Amazon India; Anil Bhasin of Havells India; Karan Singh Thakral of Singapore based Thakral Group, Amit Ranjan of Slideshare; and many more.

TiECon Chandigarh’s prime focus was to nurture future leaders and entrepreneurs by meeting and networking with top-notch entrepreneurs, mentors, innovators, investors, startups, educationists, journalists, policymakers & more. The event also brought together innovative & budding startups to showcase the ever-growing startup ecosystem in Chandigarh Tricity and Punjab.

TiE Tampa hosted the 6th annual TiECon Florida conference on February 16th, 2019. The conference started with Pre-Conference VIP Dinner night with guest speakers, an exclusive networking event for Charter members.

TiECon Florida 2019 kicked off with TiE Tampa Angels formation and TYE implementation announcements. Alex Sink, Chairman, Tampa Bay Wave shared her wisdom on ‘Impact of Technology in Florida. Steve Raymund, Founder, and Former Chairman, Tech Data shared his success story on how he grew his family-owned small technology shop to $20B tech reseller. Other featured speakers included – Samira Salman, CEO Salmon Solutions (Topic: Five Steps to a Successful Capital Raise); Michael J Coles, Founder Great American Cookies (Topic: Time to Get Tough); Suneera Madhani, Founder & CEO Fattmerchant, (Topic: Hyper Growth & How to Scale).

The Women entrepreneurship panel discussed opportunities and obstacles faced by first generation women entrepreneurs. The panellists included Kanchana Raman, President & CEO Avion Networks Inc.; Julia MacGregor President & CEO, Global Safety Management; Rachel Carpenter, Founder & CEO Intrinio, and Ron Pollack, Entrepreneur.

The Startup Pitch competition at the TiEcon attracted 50+ companies. Finally, ten companies were chosen to present their business plan to potential investment opportunities.

The event concluded with TiETAN Awards, presented by Chapter Chairman Emeritus Dr Kiran Patel, Billionaire Entrepreneur, and Philanthropist. The award recognized local startup ecosystem with award categories:  Startup of the year, Super Entrepreneur, Social entrepreneur, and Tampa Angel investor.

TiE Tampa has a strong regional strategic partnership with Tampa regional startup incubators – Tampa Bay Way, Synapse and USF Connect Innovation Center, University of South Florida. TiECON Florida 2019 attracted 300+ attendees, early-stage and growing companies and founders, and angel investors participated. The check out the conference videos, click here – TiE Tampa YouTube Channel

The TiE Dubai Chapter hosted the annual TiE Dubai Summit 2019 on March 12 and 13. The 1st day was focussed on startup clinics, workshops, mentorship pitches, and roundtables.

This year’s summit was themed STRIVE and it focused on promoting the creation of international entrepreneurial links through the global network of TiE and helping to share ideas. Find some great ideas and house cleaning secrets that you’ll be grateful for. The summit encouraged people to STRIVE through entrepreneurial excellence, innovation, positive thinking, and perseverance in following their dreams.

This year TiE Dubai Summit hosted over 500 delegates, 44 Speakers, 60+ participants and multiple Partner Workshops, that discussed entrepreneurship trends, opportunities and challenges across multiple sectors, and disciplines.