Ola rides home with top startup honour

1. Ola Rides Home With Top Startup
Honour
AT THE TOP OF GAME At the first edition of
Jio Economic Times Startup Awards, the
high-powered jury deliberated for three
hours to pick the winners

3. Contd..
• India's largest cab aggregator Ola has driven away with the highest
honour, winning the Startup of the Year award at the jury meeting
of the first Jio Economic Times Startup Awards which picked eight
individuals and companies to be awarded the white-hot sector's top
honours. The jury led by SoftBank Corp President Nikesh Arora and
comprising the country's best-known entrepreneurs and investors
chose the winners of India's most prestigious startup awards at a
meeting in Delhi last Saturday. Joining Ola on the podium are Vani
Kola of Kalaari Capital -who won the Midas Touch Award for Best
Investor, Anu Acharya of MapMyGenome -who won in the Women
Ahead category, Jaydeep Barman of Faasos in the Comeback Kid
category, Forus Health for the top Social Enterprise, BrowserStack
for the best Bootstrap Champ, Purple Squirrel Edu ventures in the
Best on Campus category and GreyOrange Robotics for being the
Top Innovator.

4. Contd..
• “The central theme behind the decision making was to identify
companies with true potential,“ said Arora, who presided over a
three-hour-long meeting of seven jurors who picked the winners.
• Besides Arora, the jury included Kunal Bahl of Snapdeal; Rohan
Murty of Cata maran Ventures; Rishad Premji of Wipro Meena
Ganesh of GrowthStory; Sharad Sharma of software products think
tank iSPIRT and VG Siddhartha of Cafe Coffee Day. In a meeting that
saw intense, yet al ways cordial, debate, the jury examined and
debated five shortlisted candidates in each category, which had
been winnowed from thousands of applications by ET and its
knowledge partners Zinnov and iSPIRT. Zinnov curated the shortlist
for seven categories while iSPIRT curated the Bootstrap Champ
category.

5. Contd..
• Ola along with healthcare technology company Practo and Hector
Beverages were thrown into mix by the jury which on its own
decided to widen the consideration set of companies for the top
award to even include firms that hadn't applied. The jury was
unanimous that whichever company was chosen as the Startup of
the Year must have the potential to grow into one of India's top
corporations in the next few years. The year 2015-16, it said, should
have been the defining year for the company's growth.
• “We wanted to make sure that the company that we select is
something that truly has a high potential, and five years later when
you look back, it should be something that stood the test of time,“
said Ganesh, a serial entrepreneur, investor and also the CEO of
home healthcare venture Portea.

6. Contd..
• The Jio Economic Times Startup Awards, which received an
unprecedented 3,701 qualified applications from
companies and entrepreneurs keen to receive the sector's
highest accolades, are an affirmation of ET's continuing
commitment to the Indian Dream.ET has led the way on
startup coverage in India, shining the light on the new stars
of Indian industry and the blue-chip corporations of
tomorrow. The flagbearer of entrepreneurship coverage in
India, ET recognises that starting up is about chasing a
dream, and the collateral benefits could change India and,
with it, the world.
• Ola narrowly beat Practo to win the favour of the jury,
which took its decisions after votes in each of the
categories.

7. Contd..
• The three winners who had solid majorities or
unanimous backing from the initial discussions
onwards were Comeback Kid Jaydeep Barman, Purple
Squirrel Eduventures, a Mumbaibased startup which
connects college students to businesses, and
BrowserStack, a software tools developer which is also
based in Mumbai.
• Kola of Kalaari Capital very narrowly beat Subrata Mitra
of Accel Partners, whose investments include Flipkart
and Freshdesk Technologies. Kola, who is an investor in
Snapdeal, Zivame and Urban Ladder, benefitted
because the jury gave greater weightage to the fact
that Kalaari is not backed by any big-name fund.

8. Parveen Kumar Chadha… THINK TANK
(Founder and C.E.O of Saxbee Consultants & Other-Mother
marketingandcommunicationconsultants.com)
Email :-saxbeeconsultants@gmail.com
Mobile No. +91-9818308353
Address:-First Floor G-20(A), Kirti Nagar, New Delhi India Postal Code-110015