Ajay Bhagwat is the new President of TiE Pune

Pune, 24th January 2024: The newly elected Chapter President Ajay Bhagwat has taken over from the past President Vineet Patni on January 1, 2024.

Like all other TiE chapters across the globe, TiE Pune under Ajay’s leadership will continue to foster Entrepreneurship. Ajay feels that all companies across various sizes need help, not just the young start-ups.

TiE Pune continues help foster entrepreneurship by building on the five pillars: Inspiring, Teaching, Mentoring, Networking and Funding.

As one of the founders of TiE Nurture- an intense mentorship program that has been very successful and now being executed in Europe and America, Ajay feels that we need to help build good companies that are making profits and not just chase the topline.

“Yes, we are witnessing a funding winter, but those that are doing well are getting the money. Money chases profits, not just topline or downloads.” In the past 11 years TiE Nurture has helped over 300+ number of start-ups of which 150+ have ‘graduated’. We have had several great success stories including Early Salary, Altizon, WalnutApp, FlytBase and SunShot Technologies, to name a few, who scaled and were able to raise good funding. However, we have been instrumental in helping many smaller ones survive and grow. We consider that to be more important for the ecosystem.

Besides the Nurture program TiE Pune also targets the student community and encourage them to choose entrepreneurship as a career. This is done by organising the Biz QuoTiEnt program where students compete with their Business Plans. Last year, Cummins College student, Shalmali Kadu (Innergize) won Best Women Student award under the TiE University Program.

TiE also has a program specially dedicated to help women entrepreneurs. “Every year, we have a Global Contest for women entrepreneurs that affords them mentoring by global business leaders, enables worldwide networking and offers the winner a cash prize. Among the women entrepreneurs who have participated in this contest we have had Parul Ganju (Ahammune) Anuya Nisal (Serigen Medical Products) who won the runner up and India winner respectively.

While Ajay wears different hats of an entrepreneur and TiE President, he also has worked hard towards creating the MCCIA Electronic Cluster Foundation, a 70 Cr project with the help of Central and State Government. “We have succeeded in creating a common testing facility of global standard there that all local companies can use with a cost advantage”.

While manufacturing is gathering momentum, propelled by the Govt’s push to make-in-India, the tilt towards tech in the business community continues. We will have to wait and see how these companies perform. I know for a fact that it takes a long time for the manufacturing sector and the connected eco system to establish, grow and dominate.