New Delhi: Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) on Thursday organised a virtual startup summit where startups funded by NRL iDEATION (NRL's flagship Startup program launched in the year 2017) and eminent startup personalities from North East India as well as other parts of the country participated overwhelmingly. The special guests from the UK and USA also joined the summit as speakers. Thus, the virtual summit witnessed a remarkably diverse startup ecosystem under one roof.
The summit was presided over by NRL's Managing Director SK Barua in presence of NRL's Director (Technical) BJ Phukan, Director (Finance) Indranil Mittra. NRL's Chief General Manager (Corporate Affairs) Nikunja Borthakur and Company Secretary HK Sarmah were also present on the occasion. Barua in his address encouraged NRL startups to leverage existing technologies and be a part of building future technologies and solving problems inherent to the region. NRL's Director (Technical) and Director (Finance) in their addresses dwelt upon various aspects of startup eco-system in the world in general and the scope and challenges in North-East India.
Sameer Baroova, the co-founder of FITXR, a fitness startup based out of the UK, delivered the keynote address. He provided multiple insights from the UK and Silicon Valley on success strategies for startups while referring to how his startup was leveraging virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to serve the fitness industry, especially during the pandemic.
The summit also saw the presence of other startup personalities like- Saji Gopinath, the current Vice-Chancellor of Kerala Digital University and former CEO of Kerala Startup Mission; Rahul Saikia, Investment Banker; Prasanta Talukdar, Assistant General Manager of NEDFi and Pranjal Konwar, COO of Assam Startup.
The summit started with a rendition of an AV capturing the journey and accomplishments of NRL iDEATION from its inception. It concluded with presentations by four startups from the NRL iDEATION community followed by a Q&A session and valedictory session where NRL startups were awarded the certificate of excellence for their performance.
NRL iDEATION was launched on July 4, 2017, and for the past four years, the program has forged ahead with the single point objective of building, strengthening, consolidating and developing the startup eco-system in North East India while carving out its future roadmap to start investing equity in startups. NRL iDEATION is focused on providing the right financial impetus to the growing startup ecosystem of North East India. So far, it has created an impact on 28 startups in stages ranging from proof of concept to scale-up and spanning from Agri and allied to SaaS sector with total funding of Rs 7 crore.
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