Startup Weekend, Sustainable Cities, Startup Saturday

As was suggested in the transformation of this blog, I am going to talk about the events that are happening and may be of interest to the entrepreneurial community around Delhi/NCR. Although I will not limit the information to just NCR events, I would know much more about the ones that are happening within the city. Hence a bias shall prevail :)

1) Startup Weekend Delhi http://delhi.startupweekend.org/

"Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile application which could form the basis of a credible business over the course of a weekend. The weekend brings together people with different skillsets - primarily software developers, graphics designers and business people - to build applications and develop a commercial case around them."

2) Conference on Creating Sustainable Cities http://www.iaccindia.com/event.asp?id=3

This conference might be of interest to folks in the Green-Tech as well as energy efficient

architecture space. The conference provides opportunities also for smaller ancillary units

that can possibly be involved in the infrastructure creation. If you think there is value for you

in terms of attending this event, let me know. IACC just might be able to get you a small

discount towards the fees of the conference.

3) Startup Saturday Delhi http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/chapter/Delhi/

Startup Saturday Delhi is a forum for the entrepreneurial community, to come together once a month - and talk about what it takes to be a part of it. We invite people with all sorts of profiles to talk about their products, services, ideas, problems and what not. Registrations are now open for the March 2011 event.

Register at : http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/event.php?eid=108

4) Startup Saturday (all across India) http://startupsaturday.headstart.in/

If you follow the links given for S S Delhi, you would already know that Startup Saturday is a nationwide event happening in multiple cities. Pick your city and make sure you make it to the next event.

Startup Saturday Delhi - August 14, 2010

Startup Saturday Delhi - August 14, 2010

==============================

Rains had literally brought Delhi to a standstill. Connaught Place was one of the worst affected

places in the city. And yet, we had managed a sizeable number to begin with. From a total of

more than 150 registrations, we had expected not more than 25 to turn up. But Startup Saturdays

have a reputation of getting the "entrepreneurial" - and we were around 55.

Alok Mittal from Canaan Partners was the first one to speak. He had come with a presentation

initially, but decided to drop it and just engage in a Q&A session with the audience. There were

questions like "what attracts a VC to a startup ?", "What sectors are going to see VC activity ?",

"why do startups fail even after getting funding from VC ?". Alok spent a good one and a half

hours interacting with the audience and sharing observations mostly from Canaan's portfolio

companies. He clearly mentioned some of the priorities that were attached to Canaan - they

were not so much into reading the educational backgrounds of the people they start engaging

with, but had rather focus upon the abilities of the founders. He spoke at length on what kind

of a startup might have higher chances to be profitable - and that certainly has got nothing to

do with the VC money. Chances of profitability will remain the same, and one or the other VC

will eventually recognize them as well.

Next up was Ashish Kumar, who also dumped his presentation to rather go extempore about

his experience of starting up a "Tech-Services" company. His father is a doctor and that's what

got him thinking on how he could possibly club the technical knowledge that he possessed in

order to do something which benefits the medical profession.Ashish was of the opinion that

such services companies will succeed if the founding members brought in different skill sets,

different thought processes to the table. Everybody excelling at the same thing isn't going to

make it work. Services sector has the dilemma of not knowing what projects would eventually

turn out to be beneficial in the long run. Initially, the service side entrepreneur would want to

hang onto every possible opportunity, but the same should not be a longer term policy of the

company. Ashish also took up questions on the motivation and success parameters of being

in such a business.

Next up were the Lightening Pitches. First one to go was "Intellect Assets" which talked about

their travel related offering. Second in this line was Arun, who was here to talk about an online

PDF magazine going at - http://www.aahsome.com . Arun wants to develop a platform for the

not so celebrity but creative people. You can send in your photographs, writings or other sort

of creations to be published in this quarterly PDF magazine. Finally it was time for Vinay Chadha

from GVC Systems. Vinay turned out to be the "star" of the day. Vinay never graduated and

has yet turned out successful products in the electronics domain. His company can be found

at http"//www.gvc.in . Vinay talked about how he has managed to earn money, blow it all away

after turning a little arrogant and now he has started from scratch once again - but turned

profitable very soon. Vinay is looking for people who can help him market his latest range

of innovations - and yes, he is already funded as well.

SSD Next edition - 11th July - Agenda

It has been a long time since this blog carried information about the SSD Agenda. This time we had the entire information and the complete program is all set. Here is what we will have on the 11th of July at the American Center, KG Marg.

1) 2:15 pm to 3:00 pm - "My Rules of getting Funded" - Rohit Agarwal of TechTribe fame. Rohit is an experienced entrepreneur who has co-founded many a startups. He has seen both ups and downs, one constant being - his ability to get funded. He will share some of his ways with money

2) 3:00 pm to 3:45 pm - "How we got here? From here to where?" - Harpreet Singh from CoCubes. He is going to give us the CoCubes story. How they started, Where they are now. Also a quick roundup of their business model, revenue streams. Why getting funded is not the end but the beginning.

3) 4:00 pm to 4:45 pm - "Entrepreneurs and VCs to focus on Offline Businesses" - Sameer Guglani from Morpheus Venture Partners (MVP). There is a much larger and untapped market opportunity in businesses that do not operate out of the "internet". Sameer will get talking about the space and such businesses.

Am seriously looking forward to this one. Especially the talk from Sameer. Have been always fascinated with businesses that don't function in the online world. He is going to talk about their proliferation, funding etc. This is really an exciting talk as far as I can see it coming from him. And then there is Rohit - just see the links Google reports on his funding for TechTribe and the aftermath. Its a good story to read and learn from. Harpreet on the other hand has a creative streak to himself. I was impressed with the way he communicated while we finalized the topic and content of his talk.

Overall, a very worthy spend of a half day. So come over and join us for some worthy thoughts. These are men who have been there and done it all. Register here for the SSD July edition.

Agenda for Startup Saturday Delhi (June Editiion)

Here is the schedule for Startup Saturday Dehi (June edition)

1) Vivek starts the proceedings with his talk.
  "Understanding the power of effective PR for Startups"
  We will start off at 2:00 pm

2) Prabind from Nivio will take us through a Demo of the
  Airtel Net PC. Nivio are technology partners to this offering.
  Lets look what they have to present here. - 3:00 pm

3) Harish goes on to explain
  "Early Stage Venture Funding: Options and Expectations".
  His talk will derive from his experiences at
  Canaan Partners. - 4:00 pm

4) Networking Session over Tea/Snacks  5:00 pm - 6:00 pm


See you all at the American Center.

Agenda for the 9th of May, 2009 (SSD Edition 5)

This is what you will find , when you arrive at the American Center for the 5th edition of Startup Saturday Delhi.

Date : 9th May 2009

Time : 2:00 pm

1) Ankit Maheshwari from InstaBlogs - He is going to talk about the idea, team and execution behind InstaBlogs. The challenges he faces operating out of Shimla. And finally some of his thoughts on the "recession".

2) A sort of "Entrepreneurial SoapBox". This will be on a first-come-first-serve basis. We will invite 5 entrepreneurs among the audience to come up and give a short 2-minute pitch about their ventures. Then the floor will be open for discussion about what problems are they facing and what are they actually doing to make business sense out of their ventures. Invitations will be available on the spot.

3) Sarabdeep Singh from Fachak - Fachak is a platform to collect content from across internet and your desktop and build mash boxes (collections) out of it. It is something like a play list of YouTube but not confined to videos, but also contains Presentations, documents and images. You can aggregate content from third party services like YouTube, SlideShare, Flickr etc as well as pick up content from your desktop.

Expecting to see a lot of fantastic people - eager to hear some excellent folks - who have been able to find monetization in the world of digital social media. Catch you at the American Center for 5th edition of Startup Saturday Delhi.

Agenda for the Startup Saturday Delhi (4th edition)

In the midst of continuously broken patterns of weather and governments, it feels good to see something that has a marked continuity to it. On the 11th of April, Startup Saturday Delhi will mark its 4th occurrence. Nevertheless, change has also been a constant companion to the Startup Saturday Delhi (SSD). Started under the aegis of HeadStart Foundation, SSD has so far been a mix of product/technology demos from software startups based out of Delhi/NCR. There have been a few "Gyan" sessions from people like Narendra Nag and Deepak Shenoy. Coming to think of it, it has been an interesting revelation about technology, business, HR mix that goes into being a startup.

This Saturday will again see the convergence of startup enthusiasts at the permanent venue of American Center. For anybody who is coming in for the first time, here is the complete address of the place you will be spending a good second half of the day - 24, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi - 110001. Here is the link to google map, for those needing exact driving directions.

Now a look at the way proceedings are scheduled for the day

2:00 pm	Sony Joy from MobMe shares his startup story. He is talking about the way his venture MobMe was brought about as a startup, their growth fundamentals and learnings on the way. A good few minutes on how did they go about getting funded. Also demoing their product offering.
3:00 pm	Vineesh goes on to take us through a demo of his new venture Weboword. He is also associated with Pictualize. Weboword is a visual vocabulary product. It portrays words through the eyes of somebody who can only understand pictures. Vineesh will talk about the things that make such niche products successful.
4:00 pm	Arun from SlideShare. He is talking about the "Essence of Design - for Startups" - why the presentation would really matter when you are a startup or developing a product. Arun has been with SlideShare for more than a year, and knows what it takes to build "presentations that matter".
5:00 pm	Networking over Snacks and Tea/Coffee

The registration mechanism from this SSD onwards has been modified. Now the registrations are hosted by the HeadStart Network. Take a look at the SSD Wiki for the agenda as well as the registration mechanism. If you have any questions/comments, please feel free to email me.

If you do not make it to the registrations on the blog posted here, it should not be such a worry. Just make sure that you are added to the SSD Project on the HeadStart Network. We will figure out the rest. Thats all for the time being. Hoping to catch up with lots of startup folks tomorrow.

Proceedings from the Startup Saturday Delhi - Edition 3 ( Part I )

14th March 2009 saw the American Center in Delhi host the 3rd Startup Saturday Delhi event. Carefully screened and chosen were the presenters for this edition, after a not so enthusiastic response to the 2nd edition.

Michael Macy, the Cultural Attache at the American Center took to the stage before the invited speakers got there. He challenged the young people in the audience to use the recessionary period we're in to find innovative solutions to problems that we face daily. He cited a few examples of companies that were started during recessions to being very large powerhouses today - including Microsoft. This was a small involvement from the hosts of SSD, and it proves that they are always willing to support such initiatives.

Next onto the podium was Mrigank Tripathi along with a demo of whats being done at his 2 month old venture - VoiceTap. The idea behind VoiceTap was conceived sometime in January and they have already reached Alpha. Mrigank expects to hit Beta in the next 4 weeks. Now for the concept, VoiceTap is a service that is trying to create a connect between Knowledge Experts and Knowledge Seekers. It is a platform where you get to speak and interact directly with experts: people who have ‘made it’ in the field that is relevant to you. The service will be delivered over the phone – and the calls will be scheduled based on the interest levels shown in that particular call - the level being judged by way of numbers registering as knowledge seekers as well as the curiosity in terms of questions being put up for the expert. They have partnered with one of the largest conference call providers for the backend technology, since getting a larger set of people onto a single conference call is quite expensive.

Link to Mrigank's presentation about VoiceTap

Mrigank faced a lot of questions from the attentive audience. He identified revenue models under these heads - premium service where subscribers can take a 1-1 call for any subject, pay per minute, in-call advertising and sponsored calls. Authenticity of the experts and live calls were the basic USP upon which Mrigank hinges the success of VoiceTap. This link has the answers to a lot of questions about VoiceTap.

Next up was Wirkle co-founder Tarun Mittal. Wirkle is a products and services company in the mobile phone domain. He started off with a demo of few products in the Mobile VAS domain. They have an excellent product in the Mobileum platform. Its a patent pending platform, and is extensively provided to others who can build their products and services over it. This was first developed for the GSMA Mobile Congress, held annually in Barcelona, Spain. This is a platform thats based on the client-server architecture. The server collates information from a number of sources, and distributes it to the clients existing in the form of hand-held devices. Tarun went on to demo a few other applications in the social media space that work over the mobile phone device. Next in his kitty were applications for the iPhone. There is this special touch sensitive application available from Wirkle, that makes a "Kiss" sound when the iPhone is placed near human skin. Or at least thats where everybody could test it.

Link to Tarun's presentation about Wirkle

Once the product demo was over, Tarun delved into the formation of Wirkle. The history has it that 3 friends working in US decided to come back to India and venture out on their own. Their exposure to an advanced mobile phone market in the western half of globe inspired them to start a products and services company in the hand-held device market. And thus was born "Wirkle".

This happens when you come out of an interesting event. This blog post has already gone past a readable length. I am going to terminate it here. And modify the title to say that this is part I of the entire coverage from 3rd edition of Startup Saturday Delhi. Will be posting the second half in a day or two.