BENGALURU: Bengaluru, which is the startup capital, is also home to many unicorns in the fintech space and fintech co-founders who gathered at the session - ‘Bangalore - Leading innovation in Fintech & Beyond’, held as part of Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024, on Wednesday said the city is the ideal place to launch new startups as people are adopting innovation.
“You need early adopters when you launch a startup and they should believe in you to try out new products and also to provide feedback,” Shashank Kumar, MD and Co-Founder of Razorpay, said.
Recently, Razorpay launched a Venture Investment Program, which will invest in 10-15 early-stage startups every year. In partnership with Peak XV Partners and Lightspeed, Razorpay’s programme aims to identify and invest in over 50 early-stage founders.
Shashank also said that the city has the best technical talent when companies, even if they are launched elsewhere, often start their engineering offices here. “You have to nurture those ecosystems. Even as founders, we can encourage that and keep investing in frontier technology companies. We have to keep figuring out how we can keep the state and the city attractive for founders to launch their startups. Because if that happens, then innovation happens,” he said.
Leaders from Groww and PhonePe hailed Bengaluru as the country’s ultimate tech hub, lauding its innovation culture and growth mindset. They also stressed on the need to innovate and create employment opportunities.
Rahul Chari, Co-Founder & CTO, of Phonepe, said Bengaluru is the “app city of the country”. He said for any consumer app, trials are very important and that people here are ready to try out anything new.
At another session on ‘Rural Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Bharat - An exploration of the market potential, emerging sectors, and global significance of rural startups in India’, Ullas Kamat, Founder of UK&Co explained how rural startups in India are reshaping industries and unlocking new market potential. Experts pointed out that they are also driving economic growth in emerging sectors like agri-tech, renewable energy, and rural tech.