Chennai Becomes the Epicenter for the ‘Sangamam’ of Tamil Nadu’s Startup Community

Republished By Plato

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Chennai, one of the epicenters of India’s entrepreneurial energy, witnessed a great union of Tamil Nadu’s largest and most lively startup community at the awe-inspiring Sangamam event last Sunday.

Sangamam is a startup networking event hosted by Tamilpreneur, a community built to nurture and grow Tamil-speaking entrepreneurs. In Sangamam, venture capitalists (VCs), stellar entrepreneurs, budding entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts come together to witness the grandeur of Learning and Networking for over 4 hours.

The event’s latest edition held in M2P Fintech Office in Chennai last Sunday saw 150+ people from diverse backgrounds participate. It is generally quite rare to see a huge turnaround for just a startup networking event on a Sunday, but that’s where the strength of the Tamilpreneur community lies.

Around 70% of the event attendees were tech startup founders and the rest were budding entrepreneurs. Arun, the Founder and CEO of Guvi, candidly spoke about how he built a 100 Crore INR company with humble background from Madurai and how it inspired him to build a vernacular language-led ed-tech platform that upskills engineers on AI, ML-based programming and coding.

Chandrashekar Kupperi from Peaceful Progress spoke about the mistakes early-stage entrepreneurs should avoid in their entrepreneurship journey while quoting examples from some of the notable investments in startups that grew into million-dollar companies.

Vineeth Vijayaraghavan who represented SPI Family Office gave a pep talk on how wisely entrepreneurs should choose investors and the need for entrepreneurs to look for values investors can offer other than just money.

Rohit Mohan, the founder of NC Global Media, highlighted the impact of blockchain technology and how one of their initiatives ‘NC BlockFiesta’ aims to inspire 5 million college students.

Krishna from JusDB emphasized the impact of how startups can build scalable data solutions on the cloud and on-premises while Sudarshan from Navabrind spoke about how e-commerce websites can leverage AI-powered Software as a service (SaaS) solutions to bring more sales.

“Sangamam is the comfort zone you don’t want to step out of while networking”, says Tamilpreneur Founder Shyam, as he mentions that people have a sense of belonging and feel a deep-rooted connection as the entire event proceeds majorly in Tamil.

Tamilpreneur has been hosting Sangamam month on month since March 2022. And so far 13 exclusive editions were hosted across Chennai, Coimbatore, Trichy and Tirunelveli. Some of the startups that pitched in the event raised funds while some of the budding entrepreneurs who just had ideas back then met and onboarded their co-founders into their startups.

He mentions that “if people who are from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are provided with the right amount of motivation, awareness and capital, we would be able to bring Tamilnadu into Top 5 states in terms of startup rankings. When I started Tamilpreneur in 2019, we were not even in the Top 20. Today we are in the top 10!”

Spearheading the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Tamilnadu, Tamilpreneur has been helping entrepreneurs since March 2019 and has so far impacted the lives of 5000+ entrepreneurs. Shyam and Praveen who are co-founders at Tamilpreneur quit their jobs at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Zoho respectively in 2021 to venture into Tamilpreneur full-time.

While maintaining a strong presence offline, Tamilpreneur also hosts the largest online community, the Tamilpreneur Club with a cohort of around 1200 Tamil-speaking entrepreneurs from across 10+ States in India and 20+ countries in the globe.

Interestingly with Tamilpreneur Club, the cost of learning about entrepreneurship is more affordable than what people spend for entertainment on some of the OTTs. At just Rs.999 a year, a member gets several benefits such as access to an app-based digital community to network with like-minded people and crack business deals.

They also provide opportunities for the founder to interact online directly with stellar entrepreneurs. The platform already has 25+ recorded sessions of interviews with startup founders.

Their flagship Online Startup Masterclass which is also part of Tamilpreneur Club membership helps people learn directly from entrepreneurs and experts who are revolutionizing great paths. The sessions are organized into three stages — Idea, Early, and Growth — and contain sessions such as how to find your investor, how to pitch to a VC, Basics of Sales, Basics of User Research and 20 more sessions on different topics.

Tamilpreneur Club is open to all entrepreneurs and one can visit the official website to avail of the subscription. With all this, Tamilpreneur targets to bring 1 lakh Tamil-speaking entrepreneurs by 2025 and make Tamilnadu rank number 1 in the Indian Startup Ecosystem.

About Tamilpreneur

Tamilpreneur is a dynamic startup that powers the entrepreneurial revolution in South India by uniting Tamil Nadu’s biggest startup community. A group of entrepreneurs, whose roots lie in a groundbreaking regional language (Tamil) podcast, initiated a mission to support and encourage students and budding entrepreneurs based out of Tamil Nadu.

The community has laid a strong foundation to transform entrepreneurial visions into reality with startups of enormous dreams. Tamilpreneur fosters ideation, and collaboration, and provides mentorship to eager minds, supporting them with funding to bring their ideas to life. Through their initiatives such as Tamilpreneuer Club and Sangamam event, they rightly facilitate the convergence of great ideas and the startup ecosystem.

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NC Global Media is a blockchain media and marketing company founded in 2020. The company has established its unique niche in the blockchain industry by collaborating with 100+ leading blockchain clients and firms worldwide. The company operates from its headquarters in Dubai, UAE, and also in the branch office in Chennai, India.

NC Global Media owns an in-house news portal called TheNewsCrypto. We position ourselves as active advocates of blockchain technology in the space. Our flagship initiative, NC BlockFiesta, aims to educate the younger generation in Indian institutions about this cutting-edge technology.

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