Prakash Narayan-
Tamil Nadu Foundation (TNF) celebrated its Golden Jubilee with a two-day event. As in the past, the TNF event was preceded by an Entrepreneur event, EMERGE 2024. The TNF Golden Jubilee event took place on May 25th and 26th 2024. The EMERGE 2024 conference, on May 24th, was held at the Crowne Plaza in Rosemont, Illinois.
Chicago denizens, Veera Venugopal and Siva Moopanar convened the TNF event. The EMERGE event was convened by Arun Kumar and Sriram Krishnan of ATEA Dallas.
Chandar Pattabhiram, former CMO, Coupa, delivered the morning keynote. He spoke on the topic of The Power of Positioning and Storytelling. Chandar related his own marketing experiences in Marketo and Coupa to illustrate his points very effectively. Positioning happens in the mind of the buyer. The objective of the marketeer is to own an attribute in the buyer’s mind. In Coupa, the attribute was to connect Dollar and Value. One needs to build the brand by doing “Referential Marketing”. In Coupa, they captured the buyer’s mind with “What Salesforce is to CRM, Coupa is to BSM” (Business Service Management).
The next aspect of positioning is to crystallize your “onlyness”. That is, “Only <my product> provides this <unique differentiated value> to <this buyer>”. When you sell only to those who value your “onlyness”, you succeed. Chandar also emphasized the importance of Storytelling: Capture the heart to win the mind. The story should have characters (heroes and villains); conflict (what is at stake) and offer the buyer a change for the better. He closed with a Star Wars analogy – we are not Luke Skywalker’s – that is the customer. We are the Yoda’s.
Dr. Sanjeevi Venugopal, a supply chain expert, hosted a fireside chat. He spoke on the topic of the power of AI and supply chain innovation. The cost of logistics is 8% of the GDP in the US, while in India the costs are 12% of the GDP. Inefficiencies in the supply chain led to a loss of over $160 billion. AI can certainly assist in minimizing this loss and improving the efficiency, Dr Venugopal stated.
Another speaker, Ezhilarasan Natarajan, spoke on how the Cloud has enabled the democratization of entrepreneurship. Natarajan said Cloud providers were cash-negative until 2018. A decade ago, no companies boasted a $1T valuation. Today, over seven companies have a valuation of over $1T. The speaker predicted the number to swell ten years from now.
Janaki Kowtha led a discussion on the Power of GenAI and the future of health care with Ganesh Radhakrishnan and Siva Nadarajah. Using Large Language Models for Biology and Chemistry, the composition of new drugs is down to 40 days – a task that would have taken over six months earlier. The use of AI and technology is improving efficiencies in Health Care significantly. For instance, hospitals are getting better ROI by helping doctors learn about new machines/sensors using AR/VR.
Anand Muralidharan discussed the Power of Strategic Thinking and Scaling startups. He said that strategy is the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ of a company. Muralidharan also emphasized on the need for companies to look at differentiators, for them to stand out in the market.
Author Soundarya Balasubramaniam spoke about the Power of Dreams and Unleashing Entrepreneurship. Her book ‘Admitted’ is about the college admission process, and ‘Unshackled’ deals with the Visa process. Both have stemmed from her own experiences.
Soundarya shared she’s writing her third book – which is a fiction on how two people can change each other’s lives in dramatic ways. Her third book is also drawn from her own experiences of meeting Rajesh Setty – author, mentor, and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. “Passion is not the cause of things; it is the effect of things,” she said.
EMERGE 2024 had two pitch events. The first was Thinkubator – where the participants were high school students:
Naveen Manikandan, a high school junior from Morrisville, North Carolina, presented an app, Parkware – which allows neighborhoods to utilize unused parking spaces in driveways for events.
Aduthya Karthik, an 8th grader from Frisco, Texas, presented an app, Tough Cookies, that focused on the mental health of school kids. Having first-hand experience, she felt uniquely qualified to provide the right input.
Adithi Narayan and Shiv Narayan, who are siblings, built an app, Give it a Shot – that provided sports analytics.
Parkware won the award for the best idea.
The PitchFest had 5 companies:
Dr. Kumar Vadivel, Dentispike. Being a dentist himself, he understands the problems of underutilization of insurance and shortage of dental staff – that his platform attempts to solve using AI.
Edward Chavan, Peozzle. Provides an integrated platform for hiring, staffing, job searching, and volunteering. His presentation focused on utilizing timesheets as a financial instrument. There are $35b in timesheet receivables every month in the US alone.
Kirubha Perumalsamy, Rollfi. They offer a payroll and benefits solution. “What Visa did for spending, Rollfi does for payroll,” Kirubha said.
Pranav Palaniappan, Silo. Silo was founded with tattoo artists in mind. They automate booking, generate customizable forms, and provide SMS reminders to clients.
Prabakaran Murugaiah, Maayu. An AI-first hiring experiential platform. He gave a demo of the AI assistant for recruiters and candidates. 134 million people have salaried jobs in the US. The average cost per hire is $6,300. Maayu streamlines the process from both sides.
Maayu won the award for the best startup idea.
