TiE to connect ideas with investors and inspire youth through Smash Up

TiE Rajasthan is organising the 6th edition of its flagship event for the startups ‘TiE Smash Up’ on 16-17 September at Jaipur which is the most exciting- high octane entrepreneurial gathering of the Pink City. Smash Up is an unconference designed for early-stage entrepreneurs focusing on peer learning from contemporary founders.

Key activities of Smash Up unconference (16-17 September 2022)

• 1) Speed dating with Investors
• 2) Inspirational role models stories of startups arena

Besides above, other activities include Smasher Popular Choice Award, Open Pitches and speaker sessions in Keynote and Fireside chats.

Speed dating with Investors

“Seeking funding is always one of the most important milestones in a startup Journey of an entrepreneur. Many promising startup ideas from tier 2 and tier 3 cities die at an early stage as they can’t find connects to the investors. Speed dating with Investors gives an opportunity to interact with multiple investorsin a single day which otherwise becomes challenging and long time consuming process for the startups,” said Sanjay Yadav, Convenor of TiE Smash Up 2022.

Smash up is able to attract the who’s who of seed stage investing space including Nexus Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, IVY Cap and 24+ such investors that include angel networks, micro VC and VC firms with more than 3.5 billion dollar under asset management, added Yadav.

How this unconference is unique than other startup events?

“We do it in informal environment of unconference- The format is conducive to creating an informal yet high energy casual interactive environment.No lengthy speeches, no business suits and no boring presentations but real life experiences that come from the heart of a young founder who recently made it into the success league. Specifically we avoid big boy gyan – as young startups relate with young startups success that were very much like them few months back.

We want to inspire the younger generation to aspire for more and opt for entrepreneurship as a career option. The entire event has been thoughtfully planned in a very vibrant & casual setting”, said Dr. Ravi Modani, President of TiE Rajasthan.

Rajasthan state government’s emphasis on promoting startup culture is very well evident and we are glad to have iStart, the key startup program by DoITC, Government of Rajasthan as our premier partner to add value to our deliverables and help more and more aspiring entrepreneurs, added Dr. Modani.

The current scenario vis a vis Smash Up 6th edition

TiE Rajasthan organised the first edition of Smash Up in Jaipur in 2013. In the first attempt, we brought roughly 50+ startup entrepreneurs and selected some 10+ startups from them for speed dating. Today in the 6th edition we are selecting approx. 40-50 startups from approx. 500 entries.

In 2013 startups were mostly in the ideation stage and were hardly fund-able. One will hardly find any startup with 1 million dollar funding then. Now Rajasthan currently has 20+ startups that are funded more than 1 million.

We want to put Rajasthan on the national startup map through Smash Up. Startups not only from Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur, but also from bigger cities outside the state like Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Gandhinagar, Kolkata, Raipur, Pune and other geographies have registered to join us. 50% of the startups selected for investor meet are in pre-seed to seed stage but we also have startups who are looking to raise series A and above. It’s interesting to see the startups coming from diverse domains like Web 3.0, Cleantech, AR/VR, spacetech, social commerce, hyperlocal social media, edtech, D2C, fintech, healthtech, IoT, EV Ecosystem, Circular Economy, SaaS, drone-tech, Agritech, hyper media tech etc.

Smash Up is a ‘competition of competitions’. All major startup ecosystem enablers from the state including iStart, all Atal Incubation Centres in the state, MNIT, BITS Pilani, NIAM, IIT Jodhpur, CIIE of IIM-Aetc. have sent the best of their curated startups who have been further screened to secure a slot in the top startups, Yadav concluded.