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India not only emerging, but thriving as innovation hub: VC Asha Jadeja at TiECon 2024

The Silicon Valley-based investor of Indian origin was speaking at the Exponential India event in Santa Clara.

VC Asha Jadeja. / Motwani Jadeja Foundation

Indian-origin venture capitalist (VC) Asha Jadeja said that “India is not only emerging, but also thriving as a hub of innovation” at the TiECon 2024 Exponential India event held on May.1 in Santa Clara.

“It was inspiring to witness how India's innovation across AI, quantum computing, space exploration, cyber tech, and defence startups is propelling the country towards its goal of becoming a 5-trillion-dollar economy,” said Asha Jadeja of Motwani Jadeja Foundation.

At the event, speakers discussed India’s digital empowerment of 1.4 billion citizens and the synergies between US and Indian innovations and success.
Waqar Hasan, CEO and founder, Zenda Financial, was also on the panel. 

“Thanks to the long-term investment in education including the IITs, India produces over 200K Computer Science graduates ahead of both China and United States,” said Hasan on the panel led by moderator Sakina Arsiwala, vice-president of Twitch.

The panel explored myriad opportunities in technology, workforce, investment, and entrepreneurship within the context of a Global India. The panelists also included Madhu Shalini Iyer, managing partner, Rocketship.vc; Kushagra Shrivastava, CEO & co-founder, Key; Vinod Muthukrishnan, CCO and co-chair of USISPF's StartUp Connect; and Rakesh Mathur, CEO, Fizz.

Zenda’s journey to India

Waqar Hasan’s team at Zenda was able to build a highly productive team in India.

“We achieved zero attrition over the last 3+ years in our India development center by hiring engineers in Bengaluru and letting them move back to their hometowns,” said Hasan.

Hasan had been warned of high attrition in India and the need to pay sufficient money to retain employees. Equity would not be valued, he was told.

“We offered them the same equity as Silicon Valley,” he said.

Hasan is a serial entrepreneur who built three startups as CEO and co-founder, a database startup that failed, a predictive analytics startup, InsightOne, that merged into Google, and Zenda Financial acquired recently by InComm Payments. He has held executive positions at large companies – SVP at Visa and Oracle.

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