Think of entrepreneurs and the ecosystem, there has to be a Valley connection to it. A premier engineering institution. Alumni who have started ventures, raised funds and grown their businesses. Venture capital firms that have funded a few of these successful entrepreneurs. Engineering graduates who are keen to work with start-ups. Entrepreneurs who are eager to build a brand around their area. What more can you ask?
If you still haven’t figured where this valley is, here is one last clue. The premier engineering institution is IIT Bombay. The advantage it has, apart from being an IIT, is that it is located in India’s commercial capital.
Hotbed-entrepreneurshipWell, the valley in question: Powai Valley. That is Mumbai’s own answer to Silicon Valley, that hotbed of entrepreneurship.
Zishaan Hayath, an alumnus of IIT-B and an entrepreneur himself, has even started an angel network, called Powai Lake Ventures. Its homepage is interesting. It says: “We are a bunch of people who love the Powai Lake in Mumbai. Some of us live on the southern bank of the lake and enjoy the view from our apartments every day. Many of us just hang out in the cafes around the lake, sipping a cold beer while soaking in the warm breeze. “We love to meet founders who build companies from their hostel rooms on the northern bank of the lake. When we like them, we fund them. That makes us the funders.
“We are founders too. And we have had our share of years in the hostel rooms on the northern bank,” he said
One of those ventures that was founded in a hostel room on the northern bank was Housing.com, a map-based real estate and property search portal. Advitiya Sharma, its 24-year-old founder, an aerospace engineering graduate from IIT-Bombay, thought of the idea for his venture when he and his classmates went house hunting in Mumbai, when they were in their last semester, as they prepared for a working life. Most of them were all set up to give up on their search for accommodation, when they hit up on the idea of their portal, which has raised four rounds of funding, including from Nexus, so far, and is supposed to be in talks with Softbank of Japan for fund-raise.
Zishaan, a civil engineering graduate of IIT-B, says Powai has much better infrastructure for entrepreneurs compared to other Mumbai suburbs. When graduates of IIT-B started ventures, they chose to be in Powai itself, because they were familiar with the area and they had a number of seniors to whom they could turn to for advice, living there. Powai Lake Ventures has funded 12 ventures so far, eight of them from IIT-B alumni.
According to Suvir Sujan of Nexus Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has funded start-ups from IIT-B alumni, IIT Bombay gets the best of the students, among all the IITs. His reason for Powai Valley’s growing prominence – examples of alumni becoming entrepreneurs, easy availability of risk capital and a growing number of graduates turning down job offers and choosing to be entrepreneurs.
Interesting reasonAjeet Khurana, CEO, Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at IIT-B, has an even more interesting reason for Powai Valley – the cafes in Powai. Go to either Aromas or Starbucks or Gloria Jeans, you will find entrepreneurs and VCs; the stage of the venture depends on which café you go to.
Harshvardhan Mandad, an IIT-B graduate in computer science and engineering and founder of TinyOwl, a location-based food ordering start-up, says the Powai ecosystem is really helpful. There are seniors to guide you and funds to back you, he says. There is also a positive effect on those studying in IIT.