Social media giants Facebook and Twitter showed commitment to invest in Indian startups at Huddle Kerala-2019, billed as “Asia’s largest tech start-up congregation”, in Kovalam. Facebook has come forward to put direct equity in technology start-ups in India. Not to be left behind, Twitter cofounder Christopher Isaac Biz Stone too has promised to “get involved”. Facebook came forward to put direct equity in technology start-ups in India.
Mr. Ajit Mohan, Facebook’s Vice- President and Managing Director for India, said that his company had “show willingness to make direct investments in technology start-ups in India.” Facebook was “willing to spend time and energy to tap the massive depth of engineering talent in the country,” Mr. Mohan said.
Mr. Mohan went on to recount the first minority investment that FB had done anywhere in the world, in a company called Meesho. What Meesho does is, it leverages on Indian women entrepreneurs, essentially pitching products to their friends and families. It focuses on skill-building and introduction of platforms to start-ups.
According to Mr. Mohan, the best thing about the model was it could bring 2,00,000 first-time female entrepreneurs online. “It is an innovation that was coming out of India, which can be exported to rest of the world,” he said, adding that women’s representation in technology is just 30-35% and such initiatives would help close the gender gap. Mr. Biz Stone, Twitter co-founder and Angel investor, said he would be investing in a Cochin-based startup, Sieve. Mr. Stone said this through a video conference while addressing Huddle Kerala 2019.
The company currently serves in the US market and will soon be expanding to Europe. Mr. Stone said he has used the product Sieve as a freelancer. “As an Angel, I consider the person first and the product second. I find Sanjay a dedicated, empathetic and extremely hardworking individual,” said Mr.Stone in his video address. He, however, did not divulge his quantum of investment. Founded by Mr. Sanjay Nediyara, a hearing-impaired entrepreneur, Sieve is a complete platform for freelancers and agencies that provides the infrastructure from websites to digital signatures and all the way up to invoicing and payment management.
Mr. Nediyara lauded this as one of the rare investments made by Twitter India and the first in Kerala. “Our larger vision is to build truly Internet companies in the cloud where people can form companies and work from anywhere in the world. Our other investor is Friends of Oorjja, which is an ecosystem for empowering differentlyabled community. It consists of senior professionals from banking and finance industry in the United Kingdom and Otis Elevators company,” he said.
Mr. Nediyara was one of the Forbes fellows in 2018 and was also invited by Google to attend their largest developer conference Google IO as their guest. He had bagged the Reach Award instituted by Eric Weihenmayer Foundation in the United States.
Mr. Anil Agrawal, Joint Secretary, Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), who was the chief guest at the two-day seminar, said that other states should replicate the Kerala model in building the start-up ecosystem. The Joint Secretary congratulated Kerala for coming up with a startup friendly atmosphere in the state.
“In India, around 1.95 start-ups get registered every hour. Soon, it could be two start-ups per hour. We have 22,895 registered start-ups in the country as per the records till September. Around 45% of start-ups come from tier-2 and tier-3 cities. About 9% to 10% start-ups have women as founders,” he said. Huddle Kerala-2019 was organised by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and KSUM (Kerala Startup Mission).
