Uber CEO Travis Kalanick to mentor Indian startups on a visit to Delhi

Indian PM Narendra Modi patting Uber CEO Travis Kalanick on his shoulder during an event in Silicon Valley in 2015.

Uber today launched a first of its kind startup mentorship program in India, where it is inviting entrepreneurs to be mentored by none other than its CEO Travis Kalanick along with his global leadership team.

Kalanick will be visiting India later this month to participate in the Startup India conference. Other global leaders such as Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son will also attend.

Uber’s mentorship program – dubbed UberExchange – is part of the Startup India initiative launched by prime minister Narendra Modi to encourage entrepreneurship in the country. Modi met with Kalanick on a trip to Silicon Valley in September.

Interested startups can just fill out this form. Uber will select which startups will get mentorship from Kalanick and his team.

“Today more and more people aspire to become entrepreneurs. It’s why prime minister Modi’s Startup India initiative is so important. We’re excited to share our experience with hundreds of startups and entrepreneurs as they begin their journey,” says Kalanick.

Sharing his journey

The mentoring sessions will address challenges that entrepreneurs face including fundraising, product design, engineering, and scaling up.

Uber’s boss will also give a talk at the inauguration of the Startup India Initiative on January 16 in New Delhi. Kalanick will speak about his own journey as an entrepreneur and how to succeed through adversity.

As a student, Kalanick founded Scour, a peer-to-peer search engine. He later started Red Swoosh, an enterprise content delivery platform, which was acquired by Akamai in 2007.

The idea to start Uber came when Kalanick and his friend could not get a taxi home while on a visit to Paris for the LeWeb Conference in 2008. They talked about having the ability to push a button on your phone and get a ride. Uber launched a year and a half later, in June 2010 in San Francisco. The company has expanded to over 350 cities in 60 countries so far.

Billionaires making India connections

Over the next 12 months, Uber will host a series of six leadership talks around the world by its senior executives. At the end of the program, Uber will fly 10 startups to San Francisco, where it will introduce them to global investors.

“This unique mentorship program will be immensely valuable to Indian entrepreneurs and I am excited about the exchange of knowledge and ideas between the startup cultures in India and Silicon Valley,” says Amitabh Kant, secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the agency organizing the Startup India event. The government program is an extension of the Make In India campaign launched by Modi after he came to power in 2014.

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has invested in Flipkart, Ola and Housing

More and more billionaires are coming forward to mentor and invest in Indian startups. Indian billionaire Ratan Tata has invested in over half a dozen Indian startups. Russian billionaire Yuri Milner is also active investing in the country. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg visited India in October to pitch his controversial Free Basics scheme and connect with entrepreneurs.

Last year, Uber rolled out UberPitch for a limited time across major Indian cities. On selecting the UberPitch button in the app, a cab would arrive and take entrepreneurs to mentors and investors, where they could pitch their idea.

See Also: Facebook canvassing for Free Basics in India