Impressed with Indian innovations, Duke of Cambridge Prince William on Monday said entrepreneurs have a major role to play, as the country is home to a sixth of the world’s population.
“Being here today, it is clear that India is leading the way in so many areas of innovation and technology,” he told an audience comprising entrepreneurs and venture capitalists at a special event.
Your ability to innovate is not just a good news for India, but a great news for the world. With one-sixth of the world’s population, young innovators like you must play a major role.
The royal couple launched the third edition of the Tech Rocketship Awards, where successful Indian startups are flown to the UK to meet venture capitalists and mentors.
At the event, Prince William raced a formula car in a simulator created by the Mahindra Group, tried his hand at making dosa, and was also taught to read braille script by a startup working on literacy for the visually challenged.
Mohandas Pai, part of the startup think-tank iSpirit, said the royal couple met at least, five Indian startups during the event, held at an upmarket cafe inside what was arguably one of the biggest imports from Britain in pre-independence era – the textile mill.
A big cheer greeted Prince William and Kate as they entered the cafe and the hour spent at the venue was full of conversations with Indian businesses, including the startups and also Mahindra Group Chairman Anand Mahindra.
The royal couple is on a week-long visit to India and Bhutan which kicked-off on Sunday.
They paid tribute to the victims of the 26/11 attacks, played cricket with under-privileged children and attended a glittering reception and dinner with some of the biggest names in business and Bollywood.
The launch of the awards was followed by a pitching session, where four business promoters looking for funding presented their ideas before a special panel comprising Mahindra, the Indian Angel Network (IAN), iSpirit, and a website devoted to profile startups.
Project Mundra, a social venture started out of BITS Pilani’s Goa campus, which has created special machines that help the visually challenged learn the braille script, seemed to be the toast of the show, with Mahindra and IAN promising investments.
Its co-founder, Sanskriti Dawle, said only 10 percent of visually challenged people in the world are literate or know the alphabets, and hence, it is both a pressing social need and a market opportunity.
The company is looking to raise USD 500,000 at present to scale up operations, she said.
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