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Welcome Address

Global Startup Battles

Brand Launch 1

Brand Launch 2

One Customer, Most of the Pipeline: Is Concentrated Revenue Investable?

An investor can see strong sales while a single customer controls renewals, product requirements or market access. The panel will separate booked revenue from a resilient business, test contract and pipeline evidence, and ask when an MSME supplier's exposure to one anchor buyer changes the investment case. Attendees leave with a concentration-risk decision checklist, not a generic funding forecast.

Minority Capital in a Promoter Business: Who Checks Related-Party Decisions?

Mumbai founders and family-owned companies often seek capital without surrendering operating control. Investors will discuss how to map group-company dealings, identify which decisions need independent review, and set reporting and consent rules without paralysing the business. The audience gets a practical way to distinguish ordinary group support from a transaction that changes the minority investor's economics; private deal rights remain a discussion, not an asserted fact.

Investing in a Franchise Operator: Which Rights Carry the Valuation?

A chain can show profitable units while relying on another company for brand, territory and renewal rights. Investors will separate unit performance from the franchise agreement, challenge the expansion model, and decide what happens if terms change. Mumbai's retail and food-service investors can leave with a rights-and-unit checklist that covers royalty sensitivity, territory concentration and renewal exposure, without presuming any company's private terms.

Lunch Break and Networking

Brand Launch 3

Brand Launch 4

The First Corporate Vendor Audit: What Must an MSME Prove?

A Mumbai-region supplier may have capacity but still lack evidence a large buyer can verify. Owners and procurement leaders will prioritise quality records, subcontractor controls, traceability and escalation routes needed before a trial order. They will decide what to build now and what to negotiate with the buyer, producing a focused audit-readiness checklist rather than another broad discussion of MSME growth or delayed invoices.

The Retail Shelf Test: Which Online Product Earns Offline Space?

A digital bestseller can fail when shoppers cannot search for it, packaging cannot explain it, or a store's working capital is tied up in the wrong variant. D2C founders and retailers will decide which SKUs deserve an offline pilot, what proof to gather by neighbourhood and store type, and when to stop. Attendees leave with criteria for shelf productivity, replenishment and customer discovery instead of a generic omnichannel growth story.

One AI Provider Fails: Can the Product Switch Models Safely?

Teams can swap an API and still break accuracy, cost, language handling or data rules. Applied AI builders will decide which functions need a fallback, what must be tested before routing traffic, and who can stop a bad substitution. A Mumbai enterprise buyer and startup can use the resulting acceptance criteria during procurement. The discussion distinguishes provider resilience from a simple list of model features.

The Stock Goes to the Wrong Store: Should AI Decide Replenishment?

Demand forecasts can suggest where stock belongs, but D2C brands pay for returns, stockouts and stale inventory when the wrong recommendation is followed. Retail operators and AI teams will debate pilot data quality, override rules and a measurable store-level baseline. The discussion will explicitly split 17½ minutes on retail inventory economics and 17½ minutes on forecast evaluation and human checks, so neither side becomes a decorative label.

When the Founder Stops Posting: Who Keeps the Brand Voice?

A founder's audience can become an editorial bottleneck if no one else can source facts, approve claims or answer questions. Founders will design a small content system with named subject experts, review rights and a handover plan. The panel focuses on continuity and accuracy of the company's voice, not platform reach or conversion attribution. The audience should leave with a workable owner-and-approval map.

Awards

Open Networking

Map the Promoter Group Before Pricing the Minority Stake

Participants receive an illustrative company chart, intercompany sales ledger and a proposed minority round. They identify which entities supply staff, property, intellectual property or credit, classify the material flows and set a reporting question for each. They then choose which approvals are essential and which would only slow routine work. The take-home map shows what to investigate before pricing a stake. The exercise uses fictional numbers and does not interpret a real company's private contract.

Run a Model-Switch Drill Before the Primary Provider Fails

A fictional customer-support workflow is supplied with ten labelled requests, latency limits and two hypothetical model responses. Teams define a failover trigger, score accuracy and unacceptable errors, then compare cost and data-handling questions. They prepare a rollback decision and a customer-facing incident note. This is a tabletop exercise; actual vendor contracts, regional availability and privacy requirements must be checked separately before deployment.

Build a Foreign Retail Price From the Mumbai Warehouse Out

Participants start with illustrative ex-warehouse cost, freight, duty assumptions, channel margin, returns allowance and currency scenarios. They calculate a range for a proposed foreign retail price, identify which variables require local verification and state a walk-away condition. The exercise stops before legal or tax advice and does not presume a trade agreement. Every team leaves with a landed-cost bridge that explains the price to a potential retail partner.

Assemble a First-Buyer Supplier Qualification Evidence Pack

Teams receive a fictional buyer questionnaire and fragmented shop-floor records. They decide what can be evidenced today, what needs a corrective action and what requires an honest exception. The group assembles a compact pack with ownership, expiry dates and a subcontractor declaration. A peer buyer role-play exposes ambiguous claims. The output is a practical readiness index; meeting a sample checklist does not mean approval by any named corporation.

Parallel room lunch / turnover

Hand a Major Customer From Founder to Account Owner

A fictional Mumbai B2B account has an open pilot, three stakeholder requests and an ambiguous renewal promise. Participants sort confirmed obligations from sales assumptions, identify decision makers, then rehearse a ten-minute handoff with an account owner. A peer plays the customer and tests what the colleague may safely commit to. The takeaway is an evidence-linked brief and escalation rule; it does not prescribe a CRM or claim a real customer was involved.

Red-Team a Document Assistant With Hidden Instructions

Participants work with synthetic invoice and web-page snippets containing harmless text and planted instructions. They define the legitimate task, mark the attacker's attempted deviation, then score whether a test assistant ignored, quoted or obeyed the malicious instruction. They add one human check for a high-consequence output. No real invoices or customer data are used. The group leaves with a reproducible attack set and an acceptance rule, not a claim that one guardrail stops every attack.

Design a Store Pilot That Can Reject the Online Bestseller

Teams receive an illustrative digital sales file, store footfall, gross margins and stock turns. They choose a small assortment, define a comparison group and calculate a stop or expand trigger before the pilot starts. The session makes a clear distinction between an online repeat purchase and a first in-store discovery. Teams leave with a short store-pilot scorecard and named data owners. Real-company expansion is used only to frame questions, never as proof that this fictional test will succeed.

Write a Supplier Change Notice Before Production Drifts

A hypothetical parts supplier faces a material substitution, machine change and urgent order. Teams identify which changes affect the customer's approved specification, draft a notice with evidence and route it to an authorised decision maker. They also plan containment for stock already made. The exercise keeps technical acceptance separate from shipping pressure. Participants leave with a change-control log and escalation ladder, not an assertion that a sample notice satisfies any particular buyer's contract.