Bhopal: The startup culture is popular in metro cities but Bhopal is very fast developing hub for startups with investors participating in events searching for feasible and innovative startup ideas. Ritesh Rangare, Vijay Anand, Shahwar Hasan, Siddharth Pal, Deepansh Gupta and Minesh Chandel have together taken up the task of promoting the startup culture in Bhopal by bringing investors, successful startups and emerging startups together. A group of six, who hail from Bhopal have their own startups which are running successfully and now they are working together to promote the startups of Bhopal.
Ritesh is the founder of two ventures Walento.com and Startup Space Station. Vijay started Vyas Group, Shahwar runs an NGO – The Approach. Siddharth runs Gravity 10 and Minesh and Deepansh together founded Book My Intern. These six existing startup founders together came up with the idea of Startup Mahakumbh along with Startup Space Station and I am Startup, where they successfully gathered investors for Rs 2000 crore under one roof, where startup of Bhopal presented their ideas in front of investors. The motto with which Startup Space Station works is to promote more and more startup culture in Bhopal and push entrepreneurs to work harder and turn their ideas into reality. The emerging startups of Bhopal were guided and encouraged by Pradeep Karmbelkar, MD, Vision Advisory, Ashish Pandey, founder, w3minds, Afreen Ansari, co-founder MyChild App, Hitesh Ahuja of Young India, Karanveer Singh, founder, Telerickshaw, Punit Dwiwedi, brand ambassador of smart City Indore, Rahul Rangare, director Kautilya Academy, Nehal Surana of e-cafe and Naved Ansari of Wadhwani foundation. Sharing ideas, experiences and difficulties, what to avoid and how to work ahead for making the idea a successful startup is what they focus on. Ritesh Rangare, one of the organisers of the Mahakumbh said that startup space station has about 150 startups working under the roof of the incubation center and this type of gathering is important to provide mentorship and support to startups.
“Bhopal is very new to the startup ecosystem unlike metro cities where there are startups everywhere. Here, people have really good ideas and but they lack in the practical knowledge of how to start and work on it. This is where we come to help the startups. Another important part of a startup is networking and funding. We help them to collaborate with the each other and build a strong startup network and meet the probable investors”, said Ritesh. Adding further he said that we don’t work for profit motive but to help the startups from Bhopal reach a global stage and that is why we also bring global startup ecosystems to interact with the startups. “We also went to colleges to get ideas and found that in the coming times there will be a boom in the startup arena of Bhopal as the students had brilliant ideas which can change the face of Bhopal in the world of startups”, he said.
