Venture Leaders Cleantech 2022: Captain’s blog by Saurabh Tembhurne, CEO of SoHHytec

28.10.2022 09:00, Tracy Woodley

In October, the Venture Leaders Cleantech 2022 traveled to Munich to meet with investors, experts, and other entrepreneurs in one of the major hubs of the European cleantech industry. We asked Team Captain Saurabh Tembhurne to share his experience and take us behind the scenes of the week-long roadshow.

Monday
On the morning of Monday, 17th October, most of the team met at Zurich station where we took a train to Munich. Once we arrived in Munich, we checked into our designated hotel. We then grabbed some well-needed lunch near our hotel and then headed straight to a workshop conducted by the Swiss Business Hub. It was great to know the insights about the German market and have the helping hand offered by Ms. Britta Thiele-Klapproth and her team. Post the workshop we had a short break and a welcome event by the Swiss Consulate was organized for all participants at WERK1. It was a fruitful event where we all presented our startups via short pitches and had networking opportunities with key corporates, investors, and policymakers. We indeed had a great week awaiting us and the tone was duly set. 
 
Tuesday
We had an early start to the day with the investor pitching session. The participants convened together at 8.30 am and walked towards our first investor pitching session of the day at Digital Plus partners. We all received constructive feedback from the pitching session. Post this session there was a long lunch and networking session between 11.30 am to 1.30 pm where some interesting conversations were had among entrepreneurs and partners. Post lunch, we had another investor pitching session with Earlybird which went on till 4 pm. This was quite an innovative session, as we all took a walk in a park nearby with partners of the Earlybird and pitched our startups.  Post the investor pitching sessions, it was time for a short snack and german beer break where we all startups together with partners interacted further on fruitful avenues. Later, a networking event was held for all participants at the office of Lupp and partners. All in all, a substantive and productive day. 
 
Wednesday
The day began early with another investor pitching session with UVC. We took a tram to the UVC building and had an interesting tour of the startups and facilities at the building, followed by a dedicated pitching session with UVC partners.  There was a networking and lunch break post this investor pitching session. In the afternoon, the HR workshop with Jodi was duly conducted which got us to learn a lot about organizational processes. The last session of the day was yet another investor pitching session with Occident. This was the longest and most elaborative pitching session which we underwent where Occident had invited other key corporates and investors to the event. At the end of this session, the whole team had the opportunity to pitch in front of them and get valuable feedback and make key connections for future collaboration. After half a week of intense sessions, we all decided to let loose a bit and we headed to Die Golden Bar, one of the oldest bars in Munich featuring old-world architecture. This was a great opportunity to connect with fellow entrepreneurs and partners on a personal level. 
 
Thursday
The day began a bit later than the earlier days and it began with an insightful industrialization session and workshop conducted by Helbling Technik which is extremely essential for startups. We had a great networking lunch post this session which prepped us well for our individual meetings. Some valuable connections were made in these B2B meetings and the pitching sessions came in extremely handy. The day ended with a dinner and drinks with the organizers and partners at Paulaner Brauhaus including a tour of the brewing process which was duly welcomed by all participants. 
 
Friday
We couldn’t believe that it was our last day. The proceedings started super early with some individual B2B meetings. This session enabled the participants to get extremely valuable feedback about their market offerings. We then had a closing lunch with all the relevant participants and stakeholders and got some good feedback for the engaging week. It was now time for our train to Zurich. It was truly an experience filled with learning.
     
I would like to thank the event partners for this great opportunity of connecting with the Cleantech Leaders. I was also honored to be the captain of the Venture Leaders Cleantech, an experience I will cherish for a lifetime. Thank you also to the sponsors to make it possible.

Special thanks to Jean-Mi from Innovaud, Emilien from Canton Vaud, Ashish from Alpian, David from Helbling, Benjamin from EY, Ina from AMAG, Pauline and Gian-Andrea from VISCHER, Paolo and Tonja from Romande Energie for taking the time to accompany us during this roadshow, providing valuable feedback, forging future synergies and above all being there as supporting hand for any related advice we may need.

Thank you, Venturelab, for organizing this trip. Thank you to Stefan, Joao, Xavier, Adriana, and Paula for all the efforts you made to make everything work, both before and during the trip. I can´t imagine the amount of organization and effort you put in with the emails, presentations, bookings, reminders, and in general, dealing with all of us, and you did all of this with a smile and a bucketful of energy. 

And last, but not least, thank you to all Venture Leaders Cleantech 2022. What a supporting and extraordinary team we had this year. It was my utmost pleasure to share my week with you guys, and learn so much from each and every one of you. I thoroughly enjoyed discussing business, getting your constructive feedback, and sharing lots of laughter with you. I wish you all lots of success and I know that we will stay in touch!

Learn more about the Venture Leaders Cleantech 2022: