The Payoneer India Roadshow Pune, Bengaluru and Hyderabad

Last week, Southern India witnessed a sudden surge in business brainstorming. The Payoneer India Roadshow came to town and what followed were three huge events jam packed information, positive energy and tons of great ideas to grow an international business from India.

Payoneer in Pune

The Pune Roadshow was held at the picturesque Le Meridien Hotel.  It consisted of interesting sessions from Hrishikesh Kunte (Ex-Head of Global of Global Digital Marketing, Zomato) who gave us a deep insight into digital branding and SEO followed by Aniruddha Atul Bhagwat (Director and Co-founder of Ideosphere) who shed light on the importance of branding in a business. There were sessions held on Payoneers services in India, and how they could be the cornerstone to growing your business by Nissim Alkobi, the Global Head of Growth.

After a short break we moved towards the final sessions where Adam Cohen (Director of Business Development, Payoneer) talked about how the opportunity in freelance is excellent on a global scale.Then Ashish Dasharathi (Lead Digital Sales, Rohan Builders) pointed out some key skills required to build strong digital marketing strategies.We also conducted a concluding panel moderated by Adam himself where he invited insights from the speakers and Manish Chhajed (Founder, Sweat Equity Partners), Sanya Kapoor (Co-founder, Magic Box Media) and Arun Prabhudesai (Founder, Armoks Ineractive Labs).

In the end, one lucky winner was awarded a brand new Samsung Galaxy Tab. Everyone proceeded towards dinner which became more of a networking session where people connected, shared ideas and explored possible opportunities.The Payoneer India Roadshow Pune was a success. Bengaluru was next in line and we had to be there in 24 hours and start the process over again. . With some rest, we moved towards our next destination.

Payoneer in Bengaluru

Expectations were high for Bengaluru after the immediate success of the Pune forum. Attendees started coming in at the Marriott Whitefield as early as 4 pm (a solid 2 hrs before start time). Patrick de Courcy, the Head of APAC at Payoneer, welcomed the guests and briefed them about the agenda. He was followed by Om Thoke, founder of Webfosys who gave keen insights on the importance of planning while in the initial stages of business.

In the next session, Yuval Tal, Founder of Payoneer, spoke about the realities of sustaining and creating an international business. It was a truly amazing and engaging session. The guests had many questions, and Yuval graciously answered them all. Immediately after Yuval’s session we had a panel where Croom Beatty (Corporate Strategy Payoneer), discussed the various problems associated with Entrepreneurship and numerous doubts were answered by Ashish Dashrathi (Lead Digital Sales, Rohan Builders), Shoebahmed Sheikh (Director, Ideosphere Group) and Ramesh Joshi (Coders Trust).

After the panel we had Madhav Bhandari (Head of Growth, Hubstaff) who spoke about how businesses could maintain efficient remote teams and how they could be more cost-effective. Nissim and Sanjukta followed him with their session about Payoneer for leveraging business expansion around the globe and incorporating ease of transactional payments.Finally, Amit Misra (Founder, Dazeinfo), spoke about growth and how to hack it in the digital era. His insights were very detailed and based on real life experiments.

The crowd was so engaged in the event that we went way over schedule.  By the time we reached the closing ceremony and handed over our one lucky guest a cool iPad, we as well as the guests were ready to chow down on some local cuisine. Surprisingly, the Bengaluru Payoneer Roadshow turned out to be even more successful than Pune!  I guess we’re getting good at this!

Payoneer in Hyderabad

The next day brought the final frontier of the Payoneer India Roadshow as we expected a packed house in Hyderabad after the immense success in Pune and Bengaluru.The evening arrived and to our pleasant shock, we received record breaking registrations- almost double the registered number!  Thankfully we’re masters at accommodating people thirsty for some business knowledge.

The first speaker, Sanjay Kapoor (GM & head of Corporate Communication and Advertising Business, L&T) spoke about how he leveraged the power of the people coupled with digital media to make the Hyderabad Metro Rail Project essential and trusted by the public.

Then Patrick talked more about Payoneer and its offerings and how one could use the same to explore business opportunities around the globe. He was followed by Yuval who enthralled the audience once again with first hand experience on building an international business. After Yuval’s session, we had Sugandha Dubey on stage (Founder, SIBSA Digital) who gave key insights into entrepreneurship and also enlightened budding photographers on successful ways to make money and leave struggling behind.She was followed by Mohit (Chief of finance and Global Talent at Crossover Markets) who addressed the various issues faced by freelancers and how they could overcome them! It was a delightful learning session.

Finally, we had the panel discussion led by Croom Beatty and the participants included Mohit, Sugandha, Ramesh Joshi from Coders Trust and Chitraparna Sinha (Founder, Esmee Network and Payoneer Brand Ambassador). They talked about the various issues entrepreneurs face and the crowd loved it. We moved towards the dinner and networking session. What followed was a lot of good food, courtesy of The Park and intense Q&A sessions. Our speakers and panelists were bombarded with lots of great questions. The entire roadshow turned out to be a real and huge success.

In Closing

The 2015 Roadshow was a success. We spoke and networking with 1400+ people in a span of 3 days. The audience was very engaging and lively. The speakers were amazing.