FundTonic Startup Marathon receives huge response

Pune, November 2017: FundTonic, an angel network with over 700 angel investors recently organized Pune Startup Marathon 2017 in Baner, Pune. Around 250 startups, 100 Mentors-cum-Investors took part in the event. ScaleMinds Accelerator, a company founded by Nainesh Kapadia that closely works with FundTonic towards connecting startups to leading angel networks has selected two Pune based startups under their Investment Program. These include Strata Enviro, an organization founded by Amol Chaphekar which manufacturers & installs Outdoor Air Pollution Controllers & Repair Easy, founded by Naveen Goyal, an app that helps fix gadgets.

Startups as well as dignitaries across Pune and other cities took part in Panel Discussions, Investor Pitches, Workshops, One-on-One Mentoring, etc. The event also consisted of a Startup Award Ceremony under which Startups across verticals participated in huge numbers and were awarded in their respective categories as per the Evaluation Matrix reviewed by the Jury. The winners from different categories were Zyego (Healthcare), a helpline service founded by Arindam Sen to help deal with emotional stress, Marketyard (E-commerce), a Mobile application founded by Anil Lade that enables users to buy, sell & rent everything related to Agriculture, Tax Genie (FinTech), a technology platform founded by Rakesh Dubey to simplify online GST E-filling, Strata Enviro (Product – Hardware), an organization founded by Amol Chaphekar which manufacturers & installs Outdoor Air Pollution Controllers and Lean Agri (Product – Software), an AgriTech company founded by Siddharth Dialani that helps farmers increase yields and farm incomes.

The event observed the participation of famous dignitaries such as Dr. Ganesh Natarajan, Founder, 5FWorld.com, Ex-Chairman, NASSCOM Foundation as the Key Note speaker and Anurag Batra, Chairman & Editor in Chief, BW Businessworld & Exchange4Media as the Guest of Honour. Other personalities included Shailendra Agarwal, M.D., Veena Industries; Lt Col. Rakesh Krishnan (Retd), Founder, CatFit Ex-Special Forces (Indian Army) & National Security Guard; Sanjib Jha, Lead Advisor, SIDBI /World Bank; Dr Amarendra Sahoo, Chairman, Atom Technology Ltd; Ajay Desai, Senior President, Yes Bank; Bhavin Parikh, Co-Founder, Fundtonic & CEO, Globe Textiles India Ltd; Dr. Sujata Malik, CEO & MD, Sunburst Healthcare; M. Radhakrishnan, Co-Founder, Autoline Industries; Santanu Samanta, Head-Business, BillDesk; Akshit Gupta – Co-Founder, FundTonic; Jiignesh Jaiin - Founder, YGEN Capital; Nainesh Kapadia – Founder, ScaleMinds amongst many others.

Akshit Gupta - Founder, FundTonic elaborating on the Startup initiatives by FundTonic in Pune states, “With our recently launched Co-Working space spread across 15000 sq ft of area in Baner, we have officially launched operations in Pune to guide, mentor & invest in startups from the city. Our state-of-the-art office premises will enable startups to not just work with fully equipped amenities but also be guided by renowned industry experts’ who will keep visiting time-to-time. We hope to come up with many more of such events to keep the Pune Startup Community abuzz with Industry updates and brainstorming on innovative ideas to help accelerate their businesses. With the amazing response that we received this year, we plan to increase to 40,000 sq feet in the next 6 months.”

Nainesh Kapadia, Founder, ScaleMinds says, “This year we launched exclusive initiatives for Pune StartUp eco-system, viz. Launch of sector agnostic seed - funded global accelerator, Launch of seed funded healthcare-focused accelerator, Exchange program to help scale Pune startups to ASEAN countries, Europe and many more. With the shortlisted startups we will keep inviting applications for the accelerator programme and aim to fund 20 startups this year from across India within which we will invest in at least 5 startups from Pune within 6 months.”

Amol Chaphekar, Founder, Strata Enviro, commenting on the occasion says, “ScaleMinds came in as that instructor or mentor you have at your gym who encourages you to do 1 more round of pull up when you are all exhausted by pushing you a little up and saying you can do it.”

He further adds, “It's a great feeling when someone supports you when you are exhausted in a complete hassle-free way with not only the funds but the connects to grow and take the business to next level by complimenting what you already have. We are thankful to ScaleMinds for coming in and contributing when it was most needed.”