- Mr Prem Watsa, Chairman & CEO of Fairfax Financials receives ‘Global Lifetime Achievement Award’
- Mr Uday Kotak, MD & CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank, receives ‘Lifetime Achievement Award – India’
- Ms Falguni Nayar, Founder of Nykaa receives ‘Exceptional Entrepreneurial Achievement Award’
Bengaluru | October 12, 2022: Chiratae Ventures, India’s leading early-stage technology focused venture capital fund, with $1Bn under management and 125+ investee companies across SaaS, Consumer Media & Tech, Healthtech, and Fintech concluded its Annual General Meeting today. The evening that brought together the ecosystem witnessed the Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern Awards being received by business leaders and entrepreneurs for their outstanding achievements.
Mr Prem Watsa, Chairman & CEO, Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, received the Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern Global Lifetime Achievement Award 2022 for contributing to India’s tech entrepreneurial ecosystem. Mr Uday Kotak, MD & CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank received the Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern Lifetime Achievement Award – India 2022 for the substantial impact he has made on the Indian banking industry. While Ms Falguni Nayar, Founder & CEO at Nykaa, received the Chiratae Patrick J. McGovern Exceptional Entrepreneurial Achievement 2022 award for her outstanding achievements, growth and contribution towards the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern Awards were instituted in 2016 to honour the legacy of Mr Patrick J. McGovern, the legendary Co-Founder and Chairman of International Data Group (IDG), the leading global tech-media company with over 200 magazines and 460 websites. Pat as he is fondly known, set up IDG Technology Ventures and anchored funds in multiple countries, including India, China, the USA, Vietnam and Korea. He was one of the earliest venture capitalists to believe in emerging markets, and his support led to the formation of Chiratae Ventures (then IDG Ventures) in 2006. Chiratae Ventures instituted and named Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern Awards in memory of their first investor, who passed away in 2016. The Awards celebrate individuals with exceptional contributions to business, entrepreneurship and economic impact.
Celebrating the recipients at the event, Sudhir Sethi, Founder & Chairman of Chiratae Ventures, said, “We have been celebrating exceptional leaders and entrepreneurs for the impact they have generated with the prestigious Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern awards every year. This year, we felt the need to go above and beyond our Indian business leaders and introduce a new category of ‘Global Lifetime Achievement Award’, thus recognising contributions by global leaders. We are honoured to have Mr Prem Watsa, Mr Uday Kotak and Ms Falguni Nayar accept the awards for 2022.”
Commenting on the winners, Patrick J. McGovern Jr, Trustee at the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation said, “My father believed in investing in new opportunities and markets in India. He was the anchor investor for the first three funds at Chiratae Ventures. I am delighted to present the recipients, and I wholeheartedly thank them for their contributions to the industry and the ecosystem.”
In his acceptance speech, Mr Uday Kotak, MD & CEO, Kotak Mahindra Bank said, “I am honoured by the quality and the jury who have decided to give me this prestigious award. We all come from being a startup once upon a time. We started small, and then we had the opportunity to grow and build a firm. The journey of an entrepreneur is one of the fascinating journeys, and Chiratae is focused on venture capital and early-stage support to entrepreneurs who have dreams is quite creditable. What is even more interesting is to see many of these companies flourish and become more sustainable companies over time.”
Mr Prem Watsa, Chairman & CEO, Fairfax Financials in his acceptance speech, mentioned, “It is a great honour to receive the Patrik J. McGovern Global Lifetime Achievement award from Chiratae Ventures. I was very excited to learn about the work that Chiratae Ventures has done in the field of Startups in India. It is indeed very heartening to learn that Indian startups make USD25 BN in revenue and that this will ramp up to USD 150Bn in the next five years. This is fantastic and wonderful for these companies and for India as a country. India is the best company to invest in right now, with the right policies and leadership, it is truly India’s time.”
Chiratae Ventures has been celebrating individuals with exceptional contributions to their respective domains through the Chiratae Ventures Patrick J. McGovern Awards. Some of the previous winners include :
▪ Ratan Tata, Chairman Emeritus, Tata Sons
▪ Kris Gopalkrishnan, Founder and Former Executive Vice Chairman, Infosys
▪ Nandan Nilekani, Founder and Non-Executive Chairman, Infosys
▪ Bruno Rashcle, Non-Executive Vice Chairman, Schroder Adveq
▪ John T. Chambers, Former Executive Chairman and CEO, CISCO Systems
▪ Saurabh Srivastava, Entrepreneur, Policymaker and Former Chairman, NASSCOM
▪ Ashok Soota, Co-Founder, Mindtree and Happiest Minds Technologies.
▪ Desh Deshpande, Venture Capitalist and Entrepreneur
▪ Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Infoedge and Co-founder Ashoka University
All the previous recipients become part of the jury that selects the following year’s recipients. This jury is chaired by Patrick McGovern (Jr.), Trustee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. The criteria for selection include an exceptional contribution to the Indian entrepreneurial and business ecosystem, Indian policymaking and driving risk capital investments to India.
