Startup Saturdays are monthly networking meets organized on the 2nd Saturday of every month at six Indian cites by HeadStart Network. Conventionally, Startup Saturdays have been a platform for local entrepreneurs to demo their products, exchange knowledge and general networking. Here is a snapshot of the latest startup action from Pune, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata!
Pune
We start with Pune—the city that is giving competition to Bangalore in technology startup innovations, which had the theme of “Mobile VAS & Applications”. A panel discussion was led by Harshal Dubli and Rajesh B. Chavan, the former being a mobile geek and the latter a marketing consultant, both having vast experience with a multitude of startups.
Mobikon Technologies and SMSONE were the startups invited to make lightening pitches about their ventures. They were appropriately grilled by the panelists and the audience. Mobikon provides mobile-based products and services to retailers and corporate organizations.
SMSONE focuses on providing local news and commercial messages in villages and tier-III towns. Its concept is to appoint 10th or 12th class failed boys in villages, who will first collect mobile numbers of their villagers and then feed them with local news and events. Ravi Ghate, a 12th standard dropout who started SMSONE, stole the show with his anecdotal humor.
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Bangalore
Bangalore had S.R. Raja, GM-Strategy, Sasken and co-founder of MoMo Bangalore Chapter, share his insights on applying business strategies to early-stage ventures. There was also a talk on ‘Validating Business Models’ by Dr. Shridhar Lolla, a management consultant and entrepreneur. This was followed by two very well enjoyed startup demos. The first was by Hariprakash Agarwal of OpCord, which focuses on optimizing processes of an organization and the second by a micro-finance startup named MILAAP.
Kolkata
Startup Saturday Kolkata was focused on two new startups in the legal field and consequently saw a comprehensive deliberation on entrepreneurial opportunities in the sector. Several other followers of Startup Saturday as well as first time attendees were present at the event. It brought together Rohit Das, an alumnus of National University of Juridical Sciences who left India’s top law firm to start his own firm RDA Legal, which has been slowly and steadily establishing its offices in major cities of India and already has offices in five major cities; and Kian Ganz from UK, who initiated legal journalism in India by starting the first ever niche legal news web portal, legallyIndia.com that caters to a widely approving crowd of lawyers, law students and law aspirants. Kian has been providing legal news of every kind and color varying from college moots, bar election results to major law firm mergers and deals.
The discussion was moderated by Ramanuj Mukherjee, a fourth year law student at NUJS, who works as an independent consultant and runs CLAThacker, a forum for students aspiring to crack the entrance tests to the best law schools in India.
The discussion was focused on the challenges faced by startups in the legal field, the services that law firms and lawyers require from the technology industry as well as the personal experiences of those who have made it through initial hiccups. A major focus was the role of technology in law firms of the future in India and how it can be used to increase productivity and functionality. Kian Ganz stated, “It is clear that in the coming years there will be plenty of new opportunities opening up and it is heartening to see that entrepreneurs are sensing this and are turning their eye on the legal sector.”
A group of students of IIT KGP also presented their own solution targeted at the online marketplace called SRAPT, which they claimed will fill the void in the present market ruled by Amazon and E-bay. The audience was active in its questions put to them regarding economic viability and success of the product.
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Hyderabad
Hyderabad had an interesting theme on “Virtualization for Efficiencies”, the objective of which was to discuss the technology trends today in the context of server and application virtualization, especially for companies in the software services/integration space. The opportunities range from packaged products to IP leveraged services, technology being a major differentiator and enabler here.
It had two interesting startups—SocialTwist represented by VP-Engineering, Vivek Lakshman and Setooz represented by founder, Prasad Pingali. Two important announcements about HydCubator—a startup incubator and on the upcoming Hysea Products Showcase were made.
Mumbai
Mumbai had an Open House full of lightening pitches and startup demos. But it didn’t miss out on the routine demos too. The first company to demo was ShopForChange.in.
Simply put, the Shop for Change label helps consumers differentiate ‘fairer’ products from others. Shop for Change has developed a set of standards for producers and companies that require adherence to its strict social, economic, and environmental principles. When products are produced and traded according to these standards, companies may display the Shop for Change certification label on the product.
This was followed by another interesting startup demo by Aditya Sanghi of Salaree.com, which is an online payroll application.
The lightening pitches were made by Piyush Nanda who spoke on ‘Events and Artist Management’, YouPid.in a social networking based matrimonial website, Greener Planet Solution that uses bio-dynamic farming and PowerSpa—a ‘Spa On the Move’.
It was culminated with a talk by Anand Kumar who spoke on the legal issues while starting a company and common pitfalls for a startup.
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Delhi
Delhi too had a legal twist with Anand Dayal talking about the legal issues faced by startups, as well as the kind of legal knowledge that should rest with the startups. He discussed various subtle aspects like employee compensation that an entrepreneur often has no clue about.
The first company to demo was MapMyIndia, a popular local startup. Rohan Verma spoke about the business of location-based services as well as the way people have been building models around this information. His talk was full of anecdotal insights on managing and nurturing a startup.
Next in line was Rudhir Sharan who gave a very informational talk on why cloud computing and cloud sharing have become buzzwords and how startu ps have tried to exploit this technology in order to become more functional as well as cost-effective. He gave a glimpse of the technology itself.
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