The 5th edition of Women Power 2019, organized by Billennium Divas Fund, a day long mega conference celebrate the spirit of Women Entrepreneurship like every year for Women Entrepreneurs / Startups, wannapreneurs concluded on the 14th December 2019 in association with Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune with a thunderous applause and was
once again a humongous success. The much awaited event was attended by the “Who’s – Who” of the Women Entrepreneurs / Thought Leaders & Startups fraternity and Industry stalwarts. More than 150+ Women Entrepreneurs / Founders along with their Women / Men Co-Founders and Industry Though Leaders participated in Women Power 2019 from across
verticals across the country.
The daylong event was chaired by Dr. Apoorva Palkar – Director-Innovation, Incubation & Linkages, Savitribai Phule Pune University with a power packed address by around 33 high profile Women Thought Leaders / Speaker and eminent personalities including Men as well sharing their expertise and insights on though leadership, funding and finance, legal &
Compliance, design thinking, term sheet valuation and various areas in overcoming challenges faced by Women Entrepreneurs & Start-up’s.
- Women Entrepreneur and Leadership, Building businesses brick by brick!
- Becoming Fund Ready to catapult your Startup!
- Power of Design Thinking in Entrepreneurship!
- Decoding Term Sheet: What “not to do” while raising funds from Investors!.
- Scaling Up – Challenges & how incubators can help!
- Opportunities of Funding by Bank of Baroda.
- Impact presentation – Freudenberg Gala’s Scholarship Program.
- Women Led / Co-Founded start-ups! – Investors Perspective decoded!
These along with other key challenges were put together in the form of individual talks, panel discussions and highly interactive group discussions to enable the participants and speakers exchange ideas and share insights to benchmark industry best practices.
“Women Power 2019” started with the Inauguration & Welcome address by Dr. Apoorva Palkar – Director-Innovation, Incubation & Linkages, Savitribai Phule Pune University. She spoke about how she took up the challenging role of leading and encouraging innovation among the students at the university / college level and bring about the much-needed mindset change of a woman leading such a di!cult and yet critical role. She also stressed
upon an important factor that today it’s all about driving a culture of entrepreneurship at the early stage in the learning curve of students and in empowering women of today. She also commended the e”orts of Billennium Divas in bringing Women Power 2019 to Pune, the city of Peshwas and hosting it at Savitribai Phule Pune University. There was a huge round of
applause from the entire audience and the stage was set for the exciting discussions and learnings ahead.
The Opening address by our Co-Founder & Director – Billennium Divas Fund, Mr. Bhavesh Kothari, threw light on the mission of Billennium Divas Fund and its objective of bringing together more investors and nurturing women startups / entrepreneurs in the country. Empowered women will empower more women is the way forward in its vision of creating
fund by the women for the women in the country.
This was followed by an enlightening first Panel discussion titled “Women Entrepreneur and leadership, Building businesses brick by brick!” with eminent panellist namely Ms. Vandana Saxena Poria, Serial Entrepreneur, Speaker, Charter Member – TiE Pune, Ms. Priti Khare, CEO – Lila Poonawalla Foundation, Ms. Pradnya Godbole, CEO – deAsra Foundation, Ms. Sharmila Bhide, Founder – Hauskhaas | Co-Founder & CFO – Calsoft Inc and moderated by Dr. Apoorva Palkar, Director-Innovation, Incubation & Linkages – Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU). The panel deliberated on areas such as challenges faced by them as a women entrepreneur in building successful enterprises, acquiring business acumen in a challenging business environment and building a strong ace team leadership roles, who and what influenced these women to take the part of entrepreneurship followed by what according to them “Leadership in Women” is all about.
The second session was a scintillating Impact Presentation: Gala Scholarship Program by Mr. Devarshi Das Sarma, Sales Director India – Freudenberg Gala Household Products Pvt. Ltd. The focus was around how they have been able to drive an impactful scholarship initiative for the women at the bottom of the pyramid i.e. house help or maids and how they empower them in building the future of their kids by providing the much necessary educational assistance in terms of scholarship. This is the flagship initiative at Freudenberg Gala which till today has impacted more than 250 women over the last three years.
This followed with another power packed panel discussion on Becoming Fund Ready to catapult your Startup! with eminent panellist, Ms. Pooja Terwad, Founder – Pooja Terwad & Associates, Ms. Anagha Pathak, Co-Founder – Unity Group, Dr. Renuka Karandikar, CEO – Bioprime Agrisolutions Ltd, Mr. Amit Kumar, Founder & CEO – MSMEx moderated by Mr. Vinit Deo, CMD – Posiview Consulting Partners. The panel deliberated on issues such as laying the foundation and importance of validating the idea, leveraging your family and friends circle while starting up, Intellectual Property – do you really have an IP, is it valuable and how to protect it?, getting the right mentors on board, identifying the right legal structure and understanding what works and at what stage to build a robust structural and operational framework to becoming fund ready.
The next up in line was an Empower Track 1 titled “Opportunities of Funding by Bank of Baroda by Ms. Gauri Jeswani, Chief Manager – Bank of Baroda. She stressed upon how Bank of Baroda has been able to build value and extend support in empowering women with various financial assistances and east access to finance for them to be independent and achieve their dreams”. Mr. K. K Chaudhary, General Manager & Zonal Head – Bank of Baroda has personally mentioned to be accessible and provide all the required support and assistance in every possible way through their branches across Maharashtra and other states.
The Post lunch started with another impactful presentation aptly aligned with the theme of the event, Scaling Up – Challenges & how incubators can help! by Ms. Tanul Mishra, Founder Afthonia Lab, Tanul highlighted on the fact of how incubators play a critical role in the growth of startups in their early ideation phase and how it nurtures ideas and help them catapult to growth trajectory. Importance of choosing the right incubator and how Afthonia has been driving innovation in the fintech space and creating an impact in the startup ecosystem. The auditorium was filled with a thundering applause.
This was followed by another power packed panel discussion on “Decoding Term Sheet: What “not to do” while raising funds from Investors! with eminent panellist as Ms. Kriti Sharma, Founder – LawCapita, Ms. Prajakta Deo-Shetye, Co-Founder, Posiview Consulting Partners, Ms. Shilpa Phadke, Founder – OnTheRun, Mr. Vinayak Burman, Managing Partner – Vertices Partners moderated by Mr. Bhavesh Kothari, Co-Founder & Director – Billennium Divas Fund. The panel deliberated on critical areas around term sheet & valuation. The elements of term sheets and what needs to be kept in mind while looking at the term sheet from various perspectives such as founders, investors, legal and finance along with rights of both investors and promotors to eliminate future roadblocks of fund raising. Some key areas such as board representations, anti-dilution, termination rounds, liquidation terms and lock in period were also key areas of deliberation by the panelist.
Next inline was an imperative topic under discussion via the Empower Track 2: Power of Design Thinking in Entrepreneurship by Ms. Jyotika Pruthi – Assistant Professor, The NorthCap University. She spoke about design thinking, how startup can leverage their brands and communication language to their end users. How to empathize the customer, creative
problem solving techniques which could helps startups to identify the exact problems and solutions. Using this approach startups can bootstrapping rapidly even fail fast and thus help them to correct their path.
The last power-packed panel discussion was on “Women Led/ Co-Founded start-ups! – Investors Perspective decoded!”, with an elite panel of investors comprising of Ms. Tanul Mishra, Founder – Afthonia Lab, Mr. Vinayak Burman, Managing Partner – Vertices Partners, Mr. Amitabh Sinha, Co-Founder & CSO – MeetingsandO!ces.com, Mr. Chakor Gandhi, Managing Partner – Jawahir Trading Company & Angel Investor, Mr. Ghoshal Dake, Chief Manager – Brand Capital, and moderated by Mr. Anshul Dave, CEO – Oceans Bridge LLP. The panel deliberated on the investors experience on gender diversity of start-up founder,how there is a shift of mindset change and trends in the funding in women founded / co- founded startups. The work-life balance factor, motherhood, family management are some of the societal issues, largely male dominated investor community are still some of the big challenges. The challenges women face while pitching their business to investors varies from the hierarchy, communication barriers, perceptions about women unable to deal with numbers, the roles and the myths around women led startups being investment ready. Another key point that came out distinctly is the need to encourage more women in the
startup and funding domain.
The final cherry on the topping was the PitchPower session by top 7 Selected Startups to the elite Investor Panel. The battle ground was ready with each of these startups huddled up to showcase their business idea and how it is creating a niche value preposition to the market. Among the top selected startups the jury as usual had the tough task ahead of them to
select the winner. And the Top three winners of the PitchPower session were 1.INNOEMBED Technology, Ms. Jhilmil Kochar, 2. Hasthkari, Ms. Alka Singh and 3. Readsnet Ms. Harshala Chavan. Heartiest congratulations to all the three winners on behalf of Women Power 2019.
The winner are o!ered free six month co-working space by our Co-Working Partner “Friyey” along with “Mentoring” support from The Billennium Divas on one area of their business challenges. Also all the participants for Women Power 2019 were o!ered one month free Co- Working Space access by Friyey.
Like every year, the objective of this year’s Women Power 2019 was once again to bring together all the Women Entrepreneurs, wannabe women entrepreneurs, thought leaders, policy makers, and the supporting ecosystem under one roof, to share their expertise and experiences, to empower more women in their quest toward being entrepreneurs and create a collaborative environment, The event saw participants thrilled and enlightened, motivated and determined to change, positivity and high energy was in abundance as the objective was finally fulfilled with the conference received a very positive response from the participating delegates, speakers and partners. The overall program content and topics
received a rating of 4.45 averages while the speakers received an average of 4.6 to 4.8 on their presentations.
The Women Power 2019 would like to once again take this opportunity to thank all our “Participating Delegates”, and especially our Host – Savitribai Phule Pune University and our Event Partners, such as our Banking Partner – Bank of Baroda, Knowledge Partners – Vertices Partners, Associate Partner – PinksEvent, Hygiene Partner – Freudenberg Gala Household Products, Beauty Partner – MirahBelle, Gifting Partner – mCa!eine for providing us the much needed support, Our Incubation Partner- Afthonia Lab, Our Coworking Partners – Zoom Start India, Meetingsando”ces.com, Millennial Worx, VORQ Space, IYEDO and The Daftar, Our Wellness Partner – Vrudhi Holistichealth Care, our community partner – POCC, Pula Pune Ladies, WIFE, our ticketing partners – Explara and Townscript, our Investment Partners – SRIDHAM Ventures, NAANDii, OCEANS Bridge LLP.
Our Outreach Partners – TiE Pune and Bringle, our Media Partners, The Free Press Journal, VyapaarJagat.com, SME WORLD Magazine, Mentoring partner – MentorMyBoard, Attire Partner – RentAnAttire, and our support partners such as LAJA, WomenHike, Madebyher, Websites.co.in and Cafebiz Women Entrepreneurs for their wholehearted support towards making Women Power 2019 once again a huge success. (Keep watching this space – https://www.facebook.com/thebillenniumdivas for the updates and visit us on http://www.billenniumdivas.fund).
