After a decade working for large and small businesses, Priyanka Agarwal Chopra discovered a deep passion for building businesses.
This passion led her to join IIMA Ventures (formerly IIMA-CIIE), a startup incubator founded by IIM Ahmedabad, where she currently works as the Managing Partner at Seed Investing.
“I’d seen the best of both worlds, and my experience at a large company prepared me to build the right systems and help other smaller organizations,” she tells HerStory.
Priyanka says her career trajectory wasn’t planned.
“I took every opportunity life gave me to become the best version of myself I could be,” she added.
After graduating from Gujarat University with a degree in Computer Engineering, he completed his Masters in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2000. Soon after, he began his career as an engineer at Sun Microsystems.
After about six years, she decided to pursue an MBA in Strategy and Finance from the Wharton School. After completing the course, she worked as a Senior Consultant in Strategy & Transformation, Internal Operations at IBM in New York, where she worked primarily in the Corporate Strategy team.
Priyanka recalls that the time she spent studying her MBA course was particularly challenging as she had two young children.
“It was the most stressful period of my life as I was not able to devote enough time to my children. I had many moments of self-doubt,” she says.
But she remembers some advice she received from one of the guest speakers that stuck with her: “Stop treating your career like a toggle switch. Ease up on the intensity when you need to, and increase the intensity when you need to.”
With this lesson in mind, Priyanka and her family returned to India in 2010.
“We wanted our children to live near their grandparents. Plus, India was such an exciting place at the time and we wanted to be a part of it,” she says.
After returning to India, Priyanka began working at Piramal Sarvajal, a social impact startup that uses technology and community engagement to provide access to clean drinking water to underprivileged people in India.
At Piramal Sarvajal, she held various roles. As Co-COO, she was involved in building the company’s systems and processes. As CTO, she was involved in the design, development and commercialization of key technology innovations, including Soochak, a remote management and monitoring system for filtration plants, said to be the world’s first water ATM.
She also managed financial planning, budgeting, reporting and setting key result areas for the entire organization.
Having gained experience in building a small startup from scratch, Priyanka decided to join IIMA Ventures in 2014.
“When I began my career at IIMA Ventures, the startup ecosystem was becoming increasingly exciting. Helping young entrepreneurs realise their potential is intellectually fulfilling and ambitious work. They have very diverse ideas and are constantly pushing the boundaries,” she says.
Helping start-ups build
Priyanka Agarwal Chopra
Priyanka says IIMA Ventures provides industry networking, in-depth training programs, one-on-one mentorship, guidance on identifying potential customers, strategic direction to accelerate the business, and support in securing funding.
He added that the accelerator has funded more than 350 startups, including over 300 pre-seed and seed-stage startups and about 40 early growth-stage startups.
The accelerator has physical incubation spaces in locations like Jaipur, Guwahati, Ahmedabad, etc. Local startups from these regions can apply to the accelerator and collaborate in the physical space. It also offers virtual incubation where startups can apply online. The accelerator also invests in startups through direct investment.
In 2024, IIMA Ventures launched a venture creation focused program that will help early stage startup founders refine their ideas, identify market opportunities, develop prototypes, conduct pilot testing and reach the minimum viable product stage.
Among other programmes, Priyanka talks about the Bharat Inclusion Initiative, which was launched in 2018.
Bharat Innovation Fund is a pre-series A and Series A fund set up to accelerate IP-led disruptive technology ventures in large emerging sectors such as healthcare and agriculture.
He said that in the last five years, the fund has supported 24 research studies to understand Indian customer needs using data-driven evidence, incubated five innovations, provided acceleration support to 55 startups and made seed investments in over eight startups. Notable startups include Jai Kisan, Riskcovry, Kaleidofin, Finarkein and Kosh.
“Over the next 3-4 years, the Bharat Innovation Fund aims to support 35-40 startups building comprehensive financial services, employment and livelihood solutions for customers in Bharat through catalytic capital, customized advisory, training programs and market access solutions.”
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Focus on women entrepreneurs
Priyanka said the accelerator has been advocating for women empowerment.
Sharing the various initiatives undertaken to support women entrepreneurs, she talks about Her&Now, a women-focused accelerator programme that has supported over 100 women entrepreneurs by providing mentoring, capacity building, access to networks and catalytic capital.
IIMA Ventures also runs programmes to help women with start-ups and business building.
The organization is currently implementing a multi-year program aimed at closing India’s long-standing gender gap in financial inclusion.
“The programme will provide essential support to early stage and scale-ready startups in building, validating and scaling purposefully designed fintech solutions, with a view to cumulatively impacting 25 million women across India. This will unlock a vast market of under-recognized and financially underserved women,” she said.
Priyanka claims that over 25% of IIMA Ventures’ portfolio is led by women founders/co-founders.
“Additionally, some of our flagship sector-focused acceleration programs have 30%-40% women-led startups as part of their cohorts,” she adds.
Priyanka believes the increased role of women in entrepreneurship is due to women stepping out of their comfort zone.
“Growth and comfort can’t coexist. To learn and grow, you have to get out of your comfort zone,” she adds.
Looking back on her journey so far, Priyanka says that although her career in the investment sector has been challenging, she has been lucky not to face much sexism.
“Yes, I have encountered societal and familial prejudices and being a mother alongside everything else has been tough, but these challenges are no different to those faced by other women and I have learnt how to overcome them,” she explains.
