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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.
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