Bijon Islam Shares Key Insights at The ‘Prarambh: Startup India International Summit’

Bijon Islam, CEO & Co-founder of LightCastle Partners, recently attended the ‘The Prarambh: Startup India International Summit’, as a panelist for the session titled “Enabling Market Access For Startups”. The summit was organized by the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India, on January 15 & 16, 2021.

The panel, which was moderated by Ms. Sruthi Kannan, Head, CISCO LaunchPad, was attended by renowned experts and leaders from the startup ecosystem. The panelists discussed key challenges which startups usually face when introducing a new product or innovation in the market, which included: lack of experience, overestimating capacities, and inexperience in networking as they look to tap into new markets, among others. Thus, the panel hosted enablers, investors, corporates, and government stakeholders to learn about their views as they play an essential role in the startup ecosystem. The key outputs from the discussion were focused on creating various platforms and avenues for startups in terms of procurement and market access and also provide insights into the various government initiatives and reforms undertaken, to ease public procurement from these budding startups. Startup Bangladesh Limited was the national partner organization from Bangladesh, where they provided key support by guiding and nominating startups and panelists, to represent the Bangladesh ecosystem in this multi-country platform.

Mr. Bijon Islam spoke about the potential use of accelerator programs to help improve startups’ operations, taking advantage of public policy support to gain access to local and international markets, and how to identify the peak time to make the move into bigger markets.

The summit witnessed the participation of renowned stakeholders from startup communities who engaged in multilateral discussions and showcased the best of their innovations. The chief guest of the event was Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who was part of the second day of the summit, where he interacted with startups via video conferencing.