Dr. Apoorva Sharma is co-founder and president of Venture Catalysts - India's first integrated incubator. Venture Catalysts has been ranked world’s 7th Largest Incubator and Early Stage Investor by TechCrunch in 2019. In India, it has been successively ranked as No. 1 early stage player in 2018 and 2019. He is also a Board Member at TiE Mumbai. Dr. Apoorva Sharma is one of the founding fathers of the startup ecosystem in India. He has been instrumental in developing the startup ecosystem since early 2000. He has been a pioneer in establishing incubators in India. He has established over a dozen incubators and accelerators, incubation funds and family office funds i.e. VentureNursery, Amity Innovation Incubator, Somaiya Incubator (RIDDLE), Mata Vaishno Devi University Incubator, and Indian Angel Network Incubator. He is the recipient of prestigious Best Incubator Award given by President of India, for outstanding performance of JSS Incubator. Dr. Apoorva Sharma has a PhD in Incubation from Amity University, Noida and graduated in Engineering from HBTI, Kanpur. He also has a diploma in Mentor Studies from Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley. Dr. Apoorva Sharma is one of the top 10 angel investors in India, rated by VCCircle 2016. Over last two decades; he has curated, incubated and led seed investment of 100+ startups. OYO Rooms is the biggest success story of accelerators in India, followed by Beardo which is a recent acquisition by Marico Ltd. Both the startups were curated, mentored and seed sourced by Dr. Apoorva Sharma. Today, Dr. Apoorva Sharma has become one of the most influential figure in the Indian startup funding space. His leadership & passion has motivated thousands of investors to take a plunge into startup investments.