Global Newsletter – April 2020

 
We are all in the midst of extremely challenging times. Our prayers go out to each one of you, currently dealing with COVID-19 and its implications not only on the health and well-being of your families but also the community, society and businesses at large. I would like to share my heartfelt support and solidarity with each one of you.

While each government across the globe is implementing measures to manage and contain this public health crisis, at TiE Global, we have been taking strict precautions to protect our members across chapters. 

At the beginning of last month, we requested all our chapters to suspend all in-person events. And it is great to see that all chapters have taken this up proactively and we can see more and more online events happening across chapters. In the effect of the current lockdown, we have cancelled our CM Retreat scheduled in July, in Almaty. Most of the events planned until August-end have either been postponed or will be organised in a virtual format.

The online events also create an opportunity for members as they can log in and attend sessions on the topics of their interest across chapters. Since the lockdown, many of our chapters are working tirelessly to manage resources for our entrepreneurial ecosystem in cooperation with dublin24.ie/. The weekly calendar of virtual events can be accessed here – https://tie.org/virtual-events/. This is a great way forward and we intend to continue doing this even when it is feasible and permissible to host offline events.

In this edition, we have featured the launch of our first Chapter in the continent of Africa, our 61st chapter- TiE Africa, based out of Kenya. Additionally, we have updates from TiEcon Chandigarh, organized at the end of Feb 2020, updates from two of our global programs TiE Women and TiE University. Apart from this, we have updates from other online events that were organized last month.

Regards
Mahavir Sharma
Chair, TiE Global
[email protected]

TiE Women is continuing to gain momentum even through the current challenges. Here’s an update for our members on TiE Women’s journey and progress so far, and what we are looking forward to:

We launched this much needed TiE Global initiative in November 2019 to focus singularly on fostering women entrepreneurs across chapters. More details on the 2020 program can be found on women.tie.org.

Thanks to an efficient committee and fantastic chapter leads, since its launch, TiE Women’s 2020 Pitch Competition program has been quickly picked up as a well planned, content-sharing platform among global chapters. The best practices that have emerged are being adopted by multiple chapters. One of those garage door repair practices in California can be seen at www.dlouhygaragedoorrepair.com. We have diligently been gathering data of current women members across all participating chapters to measure impact at the end of the 2020 program. New ideas from various chapters for 2021 are already being given shape as we write this.

In the past six months, TiE Women has managed to capture the interest of various stakeholders. We have already raised $180,000. Out of this $80,000 was contributed by TiE Charter Members, and $100,000 was contributed by empoWer (a Bombay Stock Exchange Samman initiative) for exclusively funding TiE chapters in India.

Due to the COVID-19 crises, we have extended the deadline to nominate a Chapter winner for the global finals to Aug 31st. If your Chapter is still interested in participating in the program, please write to TiE Women’s Program Manager – [email protected] 

We have participation from 26 Chapters so far (full list on the website). By the end of the chapter pitch competitions in phase 1 which ends on August 31st, we would have screened over 2000 applications from early or late-stage women-led or co-led startups. This number goes up as more chapters continue to participate. 

175 women entrepreneurs (7 finalists per chapter) will directly benefit from the 2020 program phase 1 by engaging with local and global CM mentors who are being onboarded on the TiE Women platform. 3 runners up and 1 winner will be announced at every Chapter by August 31st. Runners-up will have access to chapter level mentoring and other workshops. Chapter finalists will travel all expenses paid to the finals. The winner of the global finals will have a chance to get up to $100,000 prize money plus access to VCs, investors and other sponsor prizes for winners at the global finals in December (venue TBA).

As we’re headed closer to our deadline, multiple chapters are hosting TiE Women virtual webinars on a variety of helpful topics for women entrepreneurs from April 15th until chapter level Pitch Competitions are concluded – Rajasthan (April 15), Oregon (April 22), SoCal, Denver, Atlanta (May 6), Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore (date TBA). We share all registration links in the weekly newsletter being sent by TiE Global.

Regards
Hemalatha Annamalai                                                                               Dharti Arvind Desai
Chair, TiE Women                                                                                Vice-Chair TiE Women
President – TiE Coimbatore                                                              President – TiE New York

In keeping with our mission to build the next generation of entrepreneurs, TiE University 2020 is being planned in conjunction with TiEcon Silicon Valley which has been rescheduled to early September. The program enhances TiE’s outreach and involvement between our chapters and colleges in their region. TiE University provides an opportunity for the best university teams to network and pitch in Silicon Valley.  
 
TiE chapters can nominate one team per chapter for the final pitch competition, and each chapter can customize the TiE University program to its local needs and resources, especially in today’s unique environment; we are hopefully finding innovative ways for virtual outreach to college students and faculty during these interesting times!   CMs who wish to be involved should connect with their chapter leaders.

Chapters can nominate their single, best college team by July 15 to compete in the TiE University Pitchfest. All student teams participating in person can additionally attend Startup Bootcamp and TiEcon Silicon Valley in California. Chapters can obtain answers and assistance from the TiE Global staff or TiE University program co-chairs:

TiE Chandigarh recently organized the 5^th edition of the flagship event “TiECon Chandigarh 2020” on 29^th February 2020 at the Indian School of Business, Mohali Campus. The registered a gathering of about 1800+ attendees, 65+ speakers, 50+ startups at Startup Bazaar, 50+ exhibitors, during the single-day event. The theme of the event was “Ideate – Innovate – Leap.”
 
One of the major attraction was hosting “Sophia – The Humanoid Robot” as a speaker. Other speakers at the event included K Ganesh and Meena Ganesh of Portea Medical; Abhinav Bindra (the Olympic Gold Medalist); Aditya Ghosh, Board Member & ex-CEO (India & South Asia) OYO; a 94-year-old entrepreneur Harbhajan Kaur; Suresh Vedula of Google India, to name a few.

The management of TiE Islamabad, Sarah Hashwani – President; Zeeshan Bin Shahid – Executive Director; and Mr Khayyam Jafri – Program Manager along with the 5 startups from its Pakistan NutriBiz Cohort were invited to present their respective roles in shaping the agricultural landscape and food industry of Pakistan through the application of innovative and affordable solutions.
 
Speaker National Assembly Mr Asad Qaiser called on a meeting with the Special Committee on Agricultural Products on 4th March 2020, Wednesday at the National Assembly of Pakistan. The Committee Session was aimed at leveraging innovative solutions to uplift the food and agriculture sector.

TiE Seattle recently announced an $8.5 Mn Series A financing round by CoreStack led by Naya Ventures. Corestack was funded originally through TiE Seattle’s Z5 Catalyst funding initiative. The company will utilize the funds to aggressively expand global growth and accelerate the rollout of cutting-edge Enterprise Cloud Governance Solutions.

TiE Nagpur hosted the launch of TiE Women & organised a workshop on Protecting IP Innovation for Women Startups. The event was jointly organised by TiE Nagpur in association with the office of Dy. Controller of Patents & Designs and RGNIIPM. Women Entrepreneurs showcased products and services in Innovation Art Gallery.

TiE Atlanta has launched ACCESS, an entrepreneurship program launched by TiE Atlanta Angels, to close the mentoring and funding gap between women- and minority-owned businesses in the Southeast US.

ACCESS will allow business owners to present their product or service to established angel investors from TiE Atlanta. Qualifications for the competition include that –

a- the business must be in the Early Stage, Seed, or Seed+ funding stage
b- at least one female or minority founder/cofounder
c- pre or post revenue

The business that places first will receive an angel investment of $50,000 and an opportunity to present at TiEcon Atlanta 2020. The program aims to pave in-roads for minority and women-owned businesses to build their companies and networks not only in Atlanta but at an international scale, thanks to TiE Global’s international impact.

ACCESS is now accepting applications until May 15. Qualified participants will be announced by June 5, 2020; and screened and approved participants will go through a qualifying round on July 11, 2020. The finalists will be announced on July 14 and will present to investors on August 19, 2020.

During such unprecedented times, it is prudent for TiE Chapters and its spokespersons to be mindful of communicating positively, share only verified messages and show empathy towards the anxious entrepreneurs waiting to hear from us. It is a good idea to resolve and share meaningful content with a larger purpose and community good in mind. 

To facilitate that TiE Hyderabad has launched a series of live webinars, with the right choice of speakers, relevant topics to suit the context & content of entrepreneurial interest.  You can access the webinars here – https://hyderabad.tie.org/tietalks/.

Like other Chapters, TiE Oregon is also working in real-time to help the local entrepreneur ecosystem by creating unique programs and revising existing programs during the COVID-19 healthcare crisis. You can access the resources at – TiE Oregon COVID-19 resource page for information about funding, free six-month memberships, targeted programs, and upcoming webinars.

As a part of this collaboration, TiE Delhi-NCR President, Board Members and Charter Members have come on board as COVID Startup Advisors.

Startup India, DPIIT organised a webinar for startups with advice from industry stalwarts including the COVID Startup Advisors on how to tackle the COVID-19 challenge. The panel included Anil Agrawal, Joint Secretary, DPIIT; Deepak Bagla, MD & CEO, Invest India; Rajan Anandan, MD, Sequoia Capital; Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Vice Chairman, Naukri.com; Vani Kola, MD, Kalaari Capital; Yashish Dahiya, Co-founder & CEO, Policybazaar; and Sairee Chahal, founder, Sheroes.

TiE Bangalore organised a webinar on ‘how to master neuroscience-based techniques to fight through the chaos in the wake of COVID-19’. The webinar was led by Cheenu G. Srinivasan, TiE Charter Member, and Leadership, Executive & HappYness Coach at Positive Intention Consulting Services. The conversation was around Entrepreneurial Resilience during Crises and equipped entrepreneurs with tools to master resilience in challenging times.