Hyderabad Global Entrepreneurship Summit may rain dollars for India

While previous Global Entrepreneurship Summits outside US did not facilitate huge investments in host countries, experts believe that India could gain due to its mature startup ecosystem and its market size

Hyderabad: The coming week all roads lead to Hyderabad in India as it hosts the Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) and unveils the world’s largest Metro Rail that has come up under a hybrid model called public private partnership.

While the impact of the Metro Rail under PPP mode could be seen with a long lag effect, India in general and the city in particular is abuzz about the 8th GES. The previous seven summits were hosted in Washington, Tur-key, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Malaysia, Morocco, Kenya and California.

All the previous summits were conducted either in the US or in a Muslim country as the GES was initially conceptualised by the US President Barack Obama in 2009 as a platform to bring together American and Muslim entrepreneurs to share ideas and create jobs for Muslim youth and wean them away from terrorism.

This is the first time that GES is being conducted outside the US and the Muslim world. Saving the US, it is the first time that the United States has partnered with a major economy for GES.

Though the Centre and the state government are pulling out the stops to make a grand show and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is spending nearly a day taking a break from his electioneering in Gujarat, experts say the tangible results from GES may be not awe-inspiring going by the outcome of previous seven summits.

“If the US administration’s track record is any indication, this celebration of entrepreneurship will be another case of empty words. The administration has failed to provide proper funding and process to promote global entrepreneurship, resulting in policy implementation similar to turning a screw with a rubber screwdriver,” wrote Mr Steven R. Koltai, a former US State Department senior advisor for entrepreneurship, in Time magazine highlighting faults in the GES.

While the summit is being billed as an event that will have headline worthy announcements in terms of funding, a study by the Aspen Institute claims that merely one per cent of the “US government’s roughly $35 billion in annual foreign aid spending goes towards entrepreneurship promotion”.

According to White House Fact Sheet, the total US investment that flowed into Africa from two summits conducted in 2014 and 2015 was a little over $1.5 billion — which would work out to  a little less than Rs 10,000 crore.

To put this number in perspective, one Indian company — Flipkart — has raised about $3.2 billion.

Malaysia, which hosted the GES in 2013, had seen deals worth RM12.65 million (over $3 million) during the two-day GES, a Malaysian online news portal quote Dr Mohd Irwan Serigar Abdullah, secretary-general of the Malaysian ministry of finance.

Experts believe that GES 2017 would give a huge impetus to the Indian start-up ecosystem in the long run by attracting US investment.

“India has a fairly mature start-up ecosystem compared to previous non-US GES host countries. The summit would bring American and Indian start-ups and venture capitalists together on one platform. There-after, it would be up to the individuals or companies to take it forward depending on their synergies. So the result of this summit could be seen over the next few months after the meet,” said Neeraj Jewalkar, an investor and the founder of Sugar Maths.

Snippets:

November 28 Ivanka Trump will land at Shamshabad Airport accompanied by a US delegation.

3:45 pm: She will be driven to HICC, the venue of the Global Entrepreneurs Summit. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive earlier in the day to inaugurate the Hyderabad Metro and will join the delegation at HICC, accompanied by the Telangana Chief Minister and the Governor.

4:30 pm: Global summit will kick off with three speakers on the dais:  Ivanka Trump, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is likely to talk about Indo-US relations, and TS Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao.

Mr Rao will be promoting industrial growth in the state, and will speak about the ease of doing business in TS, and industrial growth with the focus on the Telangana state industrial project approval & self certification system.

6:45 pm: Inauguration likely to end.

8 pm: Invited guests and delegates will head for dinner to the Falaknuma Palace Hotel, along with a cultural programme.

1,500: International delegates to attend dinner. Telangana delegations have been skipped. 

Prime Minister Modi is likely to leave the same day. In case of a change in plan, two suites have been booked for him at the Taj Falaknuma.

November 29

Ivanka Trump to speak at an early session (unconfirmed). She will leave India by noon. Most VVIPs to leave on day one of the summit.