Inaugural Session - Building Resilient Boards for Start-ups!

With 65 startups India stands at No.3 in global unicorn ecosystem according to Global Ecosystem Report 2021. 40% of these 65 were created in 2021 itself, while Bengaluru will soon have the largest numbers with 31Uniorns from the present 18. Its’ truly a moment to celebrate new economy.

Nifty 50 keenly awaits entry of a new economy scrip! The future of capital markets definitely belongs to the success of Start-ups of today. The success has to be on both the fronts, business success and mobilising capital to keep up with high speed growth. Capital flow and corporate governance indeed come together, hence the criticality of role of the boards.

Boards will certainly play a crucial role in the future success of these unicorn startups more so after their listing. The startups begin with a very small board which is made of highly focused board members comprising of the VC and PE nominees who provide them early stage funding and keep a close watch on their financial performance and cash flows. Once these companies are listed the board composition changes with a wide open field for compliances of not only Companies Act but of SEBI as well. Sudden swell in number of shareholders brings new demands not only from various stakeholders but also on the compliance side. This calls for a full scale boards to handle huge number of stakeholders with their ever growing expectation of performance and compliance both. The new shareholders are bottom line driven while the earlier shareholders were topline driven.

Are these newly listed startup boards resilient enough to respond to these sudden demands? What makes these boards resilient enough and how?

Session 1 - Independent Integrated Thinking on Start-ups Boards

Stakeholders are beginning to have an expectation on organisations’ ability to create value beyond traditional financial metrics and outputs. The boards have a challenge of introducing independent integrated thinking to newly listed startups. The boards have to setup conditions and processes that are conducive to an inclusive process of decision making, management and reporting. Independent integrated thinking leads to integrated decision making and actions that consider the creation of value over short, medium and long term. While Integrated thinking attempts to change the corporate culture, Independent thinking is part of organisational culture. Why independent integrated thinking matters now?

Session 2 - Raising Market Cap thru Startup Board Engagement

While the startups list with a market capitalisation basis past performance track record and future expectation, the boards have a challenge to add further market capitalisation basis compliance driven performance. As startup ecosystem keeps on growing in influence and power what role shall an Independent Director play? Does the new economy requires the Independent Directors to possess new skills? How the corporate culture relates with newly introduced Independent Directors? Get the answer to this and many other questions on our panel discussion with eminent speakers.