Would Love to Invest in Ideas That Can Change the World: Sabeer Bhatia Original idea, game-changing, and scalability are Bhatia's three criteria. On a further note, ShowReel wishes to nurture budding entrepreneurs by funding them and providing them with a Shark Tank format platform to pitch their ideas. And plans to announce something within the next few months.
By Paromita Gupta •
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In 1996, Sabeer Bhatia, along with co-founder Jack Smith, launched Hotmail, the first free Web-based email service. With this, he became an entrepreneur even before the term was widespread and understood enough.
Not many may know, but this change in paths for the engineer was due to a business course "Business for Electrical Engineers." Hence, Bhatia knows the importance of educating people who may not even know what they are seeking. And this is what he and co-founder Javed Yunus, are aiming to do with their current venture ShowReel.
While initially conceptualized as an "interviewing platform for hiring", Bhatia-Yunus found that "HR companies were reluctant to use the platform for hiring." This was when he thought of "Turning the platform for entrepreneurship. And the first step towards creating entrepreneurs is educating them. And that's where the education bit came about."
"You've got to understand the world of start-ups. Not every start-up succeeds. Nine out of ten fail, and that's okay. But the one that succeeds more than makes up for nine failures. And that's understood," shares Bhatia on the launch of a free AI and inquiry-based course in entrepreneurship on the ShowReel platform, in collaboration with Jamia Millia Islamia university in Delhi, on Friday.
The partnership is looking to let go of obsolete education methods and enable students and youth to ask questions. The Jamia-ShowReel app will have 14 modules on various aspects of entrepreneurship and will have the central university award six credits on the course completion.
In recent times, Showreel also made recent partnerships public with MeitY Startup Hub and Atal Incubation Center. Presently Bhatia and ShowReel are solely dedicated towards "using AI for education. And for enabling people to develop critical thinking skills." He told Entrepreneur India on the sidelines of the announcement.
The success metrics for the JMI-ShowReel initiative will be when at least 1000 students go through this platform and get certified "so they should download the app, watch the videos, take the evaluation quiz, and get evaluated using AI." The aim is to achieve this number by this Q4 quarter.
On a further note, ShowReel wishes to nurture budding entrepreneurs by funding them and providing them with a Shark Tank format platform to pitch their ideas. And plans to announce something within the next few months. Original idea, game-changing, and scalability are Bhatia's three criteria. "If they are scalable, they are exciting to me. If they are solving local problems but have a small market, then I might be interested. Fundamentally, game-changing ideas, original ideas that can change the world. Would love to invest in that."
On being asked about a start-up which ticks every box for him, he names the Indian investment start-up, Zerodha. "It solved a real problem of trading and brought down the cost of trading."
But if he were to start Hotmail in 2023, in a more welcoming ecosystem and a technically advanced one, how would he do it differently? He bluntly replies "Nothing. Why would I do anything different?" But he does credit today's ever-evolving technology, "Today's technology has just gotten much better."
He wants to see and invest in ideas which have a risk appetite and does not want momentum plays.
