TEAM Taps Dream Sports’ Harsh Jain And Haptik’s Aakrit Vaish To Chair Governing Council

Mumbai-based association, The Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM), has elected Dream Sports cofounder and chief executive Harsh Jain, as well as Haptik CEO Aakrit Vaish, to chair its eight-member governing council in its inaugural elections starting from April 1 for a two-year term.

Vishal Gondal, cofounder and CEO of GOQii; Dhruvil Sanghvi, founder and CEO of LogiNext; Akanksha Hazari, founder and CEO of LoveLocal; Mayank Kumar, co-founder and MD of upGrad; Naiyya Saggi, cofounder of The Good Glamm Group and Vivek Khemani, cofounder of Quantiphi, are the other members of the newly elected governing council, ET reported.

“TEAM will play a key role in contributing towards India’s Techade and our hon’ble PM’s vision of a $1-Tn tech ecosystem. It is an honour to co-chair this organisation and work closely with the government and industry to keep growing Mumbai’s tech ecosystem exponentially,” Jain said.

Back in 2022, Mumbai-based startup founders had come together to set up a non-profit organisation TEAM to boost the startup ecosystem in the country’s financial capital. TEAM comprises Mumbai’s soonicorn and unicorn startups, venture capital firms as well as listed companies.

For TEAM, the objective isn’t to compete with Bengaluru, Delhi, or any other hub. Rather, it’s centered on achieving inclusive growth, a goal that cannot be attained by solely relying on one or two startup hubs, Jain told Inc42 earlier.

“The first year of TEAM was simply putting Mumbai tech on the map. It was about galvanising the existing community of unicorn and soonicorn founders,” Vaish said as quoted in the report.

“Now that the foundation is in place, the next two years are going to be all about grassroot development. We want every young founder and engineer to start thinking of Mumbai as one of their top choices to build a startup,” he added.

As per Inc42 data, Mumbai saw 160 deals for startups bringing in nearly $1.5 Bn in investments last year. Bengaluru and Delhi saw over 240 deals each in 2023, with the former seeing more than $4.1 Bn in investments, while the latter drew in $2.6 Bn.

The funding inflow for startups in Mumbai was already lower compared to the other two hubs, and the funding winter of the past two years appears to have had a more severe impact on the startups in the coastal city. In 2023, Mumbai experienced a 62% drop in investments, whereas Delhi NCR saw a 51% decline and Bengaluru experienced a 61% decrease.

TEAM recently conducted its flagship event ‘Mumbai Tech Week. Maharashtra’s Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and Minister of State for IT and Electronics Rajeev Chandrasekhar were among the speakers at Mumbai Tech Week. This indicates that TEAM is pushing ahead on all fronts, including policy-making and creating the right infrastructure for tech companies.

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