March 2009’s Headstart Startup Saturday witnessed a shift of focus to healthcare and online businesses by participating entrepreneurs, who spoke of their various aspects

New Delhi witnessed the third Headstart Startup Saturday event hosted at the American Center on March 14, 2009.

There was an audience of around 50, with a mix of entrepreneurs, aspirants, media and other listeners. The event was segmented into three sessions where entrepreneurs, one for each session, shared their business ideas, purposes, ways to survive and their learning points.

The first session was driven by Mrigank Tripathy of an online venture known as Voice Tap. He spoke about his idea of bridging the gap between knowledge seekers, especially the students, and the knowledge givers—the experts. He emphasized the requirement of this platform as there are a large number of aspirants looking for expert advice.

In the second session, Varun Khurana, CEO and co-founder, Wirkle Technologies, a Gurgaon-based company working in the space of developing mobile software services, shared his experiences in starting his venture and bringing it to its current status, approaching venture capitalists, starting with operations and some of his learning points. “An entrepreneur should focus more on making his/her own revenue model[s] rather than only thinking about getting funds from VCs,” he said.

The third session was on entrepreneurial experience shared by Deepak Shenoy. He primarily spoke about his last assignment, which was an online venture called Moneyoga. He started it in 2007 and had to shut it down the following year for multiple reasons, which he shared with the audiences. Moneyoga was a stock market portal providing analyses on performing stocks, suitable portfolios etc.

“Advertisers didn’t really like the idea of investing in something like a Web portal, and that too a stock market portal in the times when stock indices were falling globally,” said Shenoy.

Further, he added, “Our concept was good, but the timing of entering this space was a bit wrong.” A few learning points he emphasized were accepting failures and not being emotional about self-made business plans. He also mentioned that while conceiving a business plan, one should not start with the calculation of profits first, and that knowing when to shut down the business is a must.

On the other hand, Mumbai witnessed a Startup Saturday event organized at SP Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR). Like Delhi, the event was segmented into three. It started with Anand Anupam, CEO, Healthizen.com, a health-based Web portal for people to maintain and track their personal health records. Targeting the age group of 18 to 30, Healthizen.com provides free as well as premium services. He explained the relevance of his venture and his session was quite interactive.

Then came Makarand Karkare, India head of Skyscape.com, an online venture based on medical reference information made available on mobile phones. Karkare explained how his venture functions by having the due licenses to share medical information. They have patented this technology. Skyscape presents this information on the users’ mobile device in an easily searchable and intuitive format.

The last session was taken by Dilip Patil, CEO, Cryos Interational, a sperm and egg bank and surrogacy clinic. He spoke about the opportunities and trends in small businesses in healthcare industry. He also took up the topics of starting new business ventures and the difficulties involved thereby.

Bangalore, too, witnessed sessions with healthcare as the theme. On the same lines as the other two venues, three speakers drove the show.

The first was Rohit MA, Director, The Cradle, who shared the idea of his venture and what made him start something on these lines. He explained how his vision was transformed with the help of some doctors, planners and architects to set up not just a maternity hospital, but a hospital beyond that. He also mentioned that he had started a course by the name of M-B-A that stands for Management of Baby Affairs.

The second speaker was Kesava Reddy. He spoke about his venture, Vaccimo, where they provide customized alerts for vaccinations, medical tests, medicine intake reminders and doctor visits, not just for humans, but also for pets.

The third and the last speaker was A Suryanarayanan, COO, N S Raghavan Center for Entrepreneurship and Learning, IIM-Bangalore. With more than 25 years of experience in the field of healthcare, he narrated his serial startups and spoke about conversion of emerging trends to opportunities and further into business models. He captivated his audience with the following statement, “We just need 1% of India to be successful entrepreneurs and the GDP can easily rise threefold.”

Kolkata this time had only two speakers. Krishnendu Sengupta, Associate Partner, IBM India, has over 24 years of work experience in the industry. He spoke about the various aspects of a startup, stressing on management in changing times. The other speaker was Siddharth Goyal, a 2007 IIM-Calcutta alumnus, who started his own online venture called Kitnebaje.com, a service delivery portal. He spoke about the content delivery engine, its functions and how he manages that.

The lessons and experiences shared in all the sessions were well received by the respective audiences.

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