StartupWave launched its first in a series of city-based ecosystem building events called Pioneer’s Day in Jaipur on 26^th June, 2015. The objective of these events is to partner with various local players in the startup ecosystem and help entrepreneurs navigate the universe of startup support available to them in their own cities.

In-spite of being a weekday, as many as 30 entrepreneurs participated in the Pioneers’ day event organized at Startup Oasis in Jaipur.

All entrepreneurs were based out of Jaipur and came from different backgrounds and were from across sectors. Most of the enterprises were at the ideation stage although there were some who had already launched their products.

The event started with Mr. Mukund Prasad (Associate Director- Intellecap) encouraging entrepreneurs to pursue their entrepreneurship dreams and illustrating how startups can scale by drawing parallels to the hit movie ‘How to Train your Dragon’.

The session also focused on how StartupWave through its tools and networks can help aspiring entrepreneurs at the ideation stage. Given the high number of entrepreneurs at the ideation stage at the event, this session turned out to be very interactive with many questions thrown at the StartupWave team

Mr. Chintan Bakshi (COO – Startup Oasis) then addressed entrepreneurs on how Startup Oasis can support them during prototyping phase. He also launched tie-accel – an accelerator programme organized by Startup Oasis, RAIN and TiE for startups in Jaipur.

Next was the turn of investors to address the young entrepreneurs on what it takes to raise funding. Mr. Sanjay Yadav (Co-founder –Rajasthan Angel Investment Network) and Mr. Ravi Mathur (Vice President – RVCF) had an interactive session with entrepreneurs on when and how to best approach investors. They also threw light on how young entrepreneurs should get their ideas and business models validated by customers before approaching an investor.

Although only 20 mins were allotted to this Q&A session the response from the enthusiastic crowd was so good that the session lasted for more than an hour. Young entrepreneurs made most of their opportunity to interact with the StartupWave team and prominent ecosystem players in Jaipur. Most questions were around specific issues startups were facing from finding cofounders to funding related aspects. A lot of entrepreneurs took the opportunity to validate their ideas in front of the audience while others used the chance to introduce their newly launched product/ service in front of the audience.