Kotak Mahindra Bank, Venture Garage conduct Capitalize 3.0 to boost India’s start-up ecosystem

Venture Garage and Kotak Mahindra Bank (Kotak) organised the third edition of Capitalize, in New Delhi. Capitalize is the annual flagship event of Venture Garage that gives a platform to start-ups to interact with investors on a one-on-one basis, pitch their business ideas and raise funding from leading angel investors and venture capital funds. Over 300 start-ups and 30 venture capitalists and angel investors including Girish Shivani of YourNest Venture Capital, Rajul Garg of Leo Capital, Anirudh Damani of Artha India Ventures, Sheetal Bahl of GrowX Venture Management and Neeraj Das of 7 Gate Ventures participated in Capitalize 3.0.

More than 500 entrepreneurs from all across India submitted entries to Capitalize 3.0, of which 25 start-ups were ultimately shortlisted for pitching. The platform extends a whole host of resources to help start-ups and entrepreneurs grow their businesses and also gives them an avenue to fund their projects. Through one-on-one interactions with investors, entrepreneurs have the opportunity to turn their ideas into a viable business model. In the first two editions of Capitalize, start-ups cumulatively raised over Rs 8 crore.

Additionally, at the event, Kotak presented a customised suite of banking solutions to meet the unique requirements of start-ups. The Kotak Start-up Current Account helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses and manage their day-to-day business needs efficiently.

Puneet Kapoor, senior executive vice president, Kotak Mahindra Bank said: “India is one of the most start-up friendly countries in the world and forums such as Capitalize 3.0 have an important role to play to give a fillip to India’s start-up ecosystem. In addition to access to investors and fund raising, one of the key challenges that early stage businesses face is managing their banking requirements more efficiently. Kotak offers a customised solution - the Kotak Start-up Current Account, which meets the unique banking requirements and extends a secure, user-friendly and seamless experience to entrepreneurs.”

Vivek Kumar, CEO, Venture Garage said: “We are humbled to see start-ups relentlessly pursuing the goal of finding solutions to Indian problems. We are in sync with the Indian entrepreneurs’ vision to revolutionise various sectors with the use of technology. Our mission is to handhold these entrepreneurs in building scalable businesses by assisting them with fund raising from our network of 500+ VC & Angel Investors. #weloveentrepreneurs”.

The attitude of a founder was cited as a crucial factor while making an investment decision. Anirudh Damani of Artha Venture Fund said, "We are happy to invest in founders who are clear in their vision about the business and their alma mater does not have to play that role." Artha was one of the early backers of OYO Rooms and made a 150X exit on their investment.

The Kotak Start-up Current Account comes with a host of features such as no balance commitment for the first 12 months, customised payment and collection solutions to suit each start-up’s business model, corporate salary accounts for employees, special forex pricing, cost-effective payment solutions and trade forex solutions.

Further, each Kotak Start-up Current Account offers a number of value-added services to support entrepreneurs such as workplace solutions, taxation matters, digital media solutions, inspection and certification services, enterprise solutions for business and SME credit assessment solutions. All these services are provided in a cost-effective manner through empanelled vendors of Kotak.