Rs. 8,000 ticket, Musk as guest: Start-up event scams people
What's the story
A start-up of scamming young entrepreneurs?
Touted to be "the world's biggest investment festival," World Startup Convention in Greater Noida kicked off with a good word as many public figures promoted the event.
However, it turned out to be a major scam as the organizers duped people with misleading promises and exorbitant ticket prices.
Here's what happened.
Feature
What is World Startup Convention all about?
World Startup Convention is organized by investors Luke Talwar and Arjun Chaudhary to offer a platform to budding entrepreneurs to connect with the biggies in the industry.
It was slated to begin on March 24 this year in Greater Noida and was organized to help start-ups attain funding from investors.
The event was open to all aspiring entrepreneurs from all over India.
Scam
The scam: Organizers promised to bring Musk, Pichai, and Adani
The organizers of this convention had their entire publicity running around Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Gautam Adani, and some of India's most coveted politicians and industrialists attending it.
The same was even listed on their official website's homepage.
However, when the start-ups reached the convention, it turned out to be a scam as not even a single guest was present.
Duped
They swindled people by charging them Rs. 8,000 per ticket
The ticket to this event was priced at Rs. 8,000 per head and several people bought it.
Some of them even traveled thousands of kilometers (Chennai, Nashik, Surat) to attend the convention, with hopes of receiving funding for their brainchild.
As per Aman Jindal (@mannkeviews) on Twitter, more than 2,000 budding start-ups were scammed for over Rs. 100 crores of wealth!
Twitter Post
A convention that turned out to be a fraud show!
More than 2000 startups have been scammed for over 100cr of wealth in the name of a startup event-World Startup Convention- World Biggest Startup Funding Festival, which eventually didn't even witness a single investor. #JusticeforStartups #WSCScam @nitin_gadkari @myogiadityanath
— Aman Jindal (@mannkeviews) March 26, 2023
Pictures
Images of Nitin Gadkari used in promoting the event
To make it look more genuine, the organizers had also put up images of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari on their website.
Not just that, it has been recently discovered that author Chetan Bhagat had also promoted this convention on his personal social media page.
Joining him were famous influencers including Ankur Warikoo, MBA Chaiwala, and Raj Shamani who publicized this event.
Twitter Post
Promoting the scam or getting scammed themselves?
hey @chetan_bhagat now you also part of this scam..
— 444969.eth StatueOfUnity.eth (@comtoeth) March 29, 2023
‘Big Scam’ Founders Slam Ankur Warikoo, Chetan Bhagat For Promoting Fyre Festival-Like World Startup Convention#WorldStartupConvention #scam #startupsduped #biggestscamwithstartupsever #chetanbhagat pic.twitter.com/lDLq7kMoIM
Chaos
Even the events they had lined up were lowbrow
Besides failing to fulfill the said promises and fooling thousands of people, the quality of the events lined up at the convention was substandard.
As chaos stirred up, police officials reached the venue to handle the situation.
Shockingly, this isn't the first time the organizers have done this, for their previous events have received a lot of flak in the past as well.
Twitter Post
Police also arrived at the event location
No investors, No format, No explanations, No chief guests.
— Gestureminds Webservices (@gesturemindsllp) March 24, 2023
Absolutely a fraud show at World Startup Convention in Noida.
They made a fool out if all startups here. Shame@nitin_gadkari @Prafull_mbachai @chetan_bhagat @warikoo @rajshamani @kpmaurya1 @pushkardhami @myogiadityanath pic.twitter.com/iN9T7HTym9