Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator (YC) is coming up with its first series of a Virtual IIT tour at 6 IITs.
The Virtual Tour will see the incubator hosting a series of online talks at six campuses in September and October starting from today. These talks will be conducted by YC partners and alumni founders from each of these schools starting with IIT Roorkee on September 4(today), followed by IIT Kharagpur on September 18, IIT Kanpur on September 25, IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, and IIT Delhi.
Hosting these talks are YC partners Tim Brady, Michael Seibel and Anu Hariharan and entrepreneurs like Razorpay founders Harshil Mathur and Shashank Kumar; OkCredit founder Harsh Pokhrana; FamPay founders Sambhav Jain and Kush Taneja; and Chutney founder Vivek Nautiyal.
Kat Manalac, Partner at Y Combinator said “YC partners will talk about myths around starting startups, some of the secret advantages of the YC community, war stories from starting their own companies as well as getting ready in college if they want to start a startup one day, while the founders will talk about their journey, fundraising and their stint at YC”
India had emerged as an important market for the accelerator, famous for incubating internet majors like Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. It has backed about 100 Indian based startups who have raised more than $700 Mn in capital. Among its significant early bets in India are digital payments firm Razorpay, social commerce player Meesho and fintech startup Cleartax which have received support from Y Combinator in the earliest stage of building their companies.
“By 2030, India will be one of the most important economies in the world, and the Indian startup founders of today will play a huge role in accelerating the country’s growth and global reach” believes Y Combinator.