Mr Salil Chinchore, CHRO, ElasticRun, delivered an insightful Leadership Talk at XISS, Ranchi, for First-Year students of Human Resource Management (HRM). In this insightful leadership session about the lifecycle of startups, their business models, the difficulties they face, issues with employee engagement, and twelve leverage experiences were discussed in detail by him.

A unicorn in B2B e-commerce, ElasticRun is supported by illustrious investors like Goldman Sachs, among others. This startup, which connects FMCG and grocery brands through a network of tiny outlets and enables banking institutions to expand financial services to rural customers with the use of technology-led data and AI, was also referred to by the CHRO as "Rural Amazon for Rural India".

The CHRO during the talk, discussed about the life cycle of the startup company. He mentioned it to consist of 3 stages namely:

1. Seed capital stage: This is the initial stage of any startup where angel investors invest their capital. The revenue in this stage is negative and so this stage is also known as valley of death.
2. Early and later stage: After reaching the breakeven point, the early stage starts where startup starts earning profit. In the later stage it earns excessive profit, and this is the stage where VCs, acquisition, mergers, and strategic alliance happen.
3. Second offering stage: This stage startup goes for IPOs and the revenue becomes plateau in shape.

Secondly, Mr Chinchore also talked about the relationship between business model characteristics and DNA of the unicorn startup. Additionally, he talked about imparities in the startup company where “gig workers” play an important role and moonlighting is common among the employees. There is no barrier and no compartment everyone is open to work in any domain like a coder may be given a task of hiring, selection and recruiting. Thirdly and the most essential part, i.e., the challenges associated with the engagement of employees. Mr Chinchore concluded the session by giving thanks to XISS and motivated the students of First- Year HRM students to learn more and more about the dynamic changing world and have a purpose in life.