Young entrepreneurs connect with the Maharashtra state government

Mumbai's young guns (read: entrepreneurs) will now have a chance to have their say on state policy making, thanks to the newly-launched Mumbai Youth Forum (MYF).

Co-founded by social entrepreneur Samyak Chakrabarty and Mumbai Central for International Arbitration's Madhukeswar Desai, with BJP MP Poonam Mahajan as its chairman, MYF intends to act as an interface between the city's young entrepreneurs and the state government to enable an exchange of progressive ideas and serve as a platform for redressal of grievances.

At its first official meeting in Nariman Point on Tuesday, 25 young city-based CEOs engaged in dialogue surrounding policy ideas and the roadblocks involved in implementing them with Mahajan.

The aim of the dialogue was to understand the bottlenecks in the way of transforming Mumbai into a startup hub, as well as seek new ideas from the participants. Participants included Book My Show's Ashish Hemrajani, Welspun's Vanshika Goenka, Yes Bank's Radha Kapoor, as well as Restaurant Association of India's Riyaaz Amlani.

"The function of MYF is to facilitate interaction between the change makers and the government," Mahajan told mid-day.
"We discussed ideas and received inputs on how they'd like to contribute towards state policies. Mumbai is the city that contributes nearly 25 per cent of the nation's GDP and it is essential that young Mumbaikars, who are change makers be given the chance to have their voice heard when it comes to implementing policies."