Not in Mumbai yet, but Pune is good enough. Proto.in, the startup showcase event in its sixth edition, comes to town on July 25 and nominations are now open — link here to the nomination form. All entries have to be in by June 15. The upcoming edition will be a one-day affair with a Sunday brunch (how la-di-da) planned for the alumni and anyone else who would like to stay back.
What’s new this edition? Here’s an excerpted and edited version of events to unfold, based on Proto.in curator Vijay Anand’s email on the same:
New Element 1: The day will be split into two moods. The first, from 9.00 am to 4.30 pm, will be occupied by talks and sessions aimed at educating, nurturing and supporting the startup landscape in India. Post 5.00 pm, 20 of the best startups will take to the stage to pitch their idea/business plan to the audience.
New Element 2: A three-day bootcamp for the showcase startups precedes the actual pitch. Day 1 will focus on diving into the business plan. The organizers would like to ensure that the startups focus on the client and market for the next one year of operation. Day 2 will be all about teaching startups the art of the pitch. The organizers will bring in investors, the gurus of the advertising world to teach startups how to sway clients and the toughest journalists to buy (and hawk) the startups’ story. (I must mention that selling to journalists emerged as one of the key to-dos in Edition 5 and it remains a rather immature feature in an otherwise mature forum. If you have to sell that hard, your story is not worth it anyway.) Day 3 will be all about the stage. Event management company BuzzWorks will teach startups how to present themselves in front of the camera and so on.
New Element 3: There’s also something for startups who don’t make it to the shortlist. The organizers are going to ensure that the people who are involved in the shortlisting process spend more time with companies that are not quite ready yet and ensure that they are “helped in some way to help find the way” (this sounds terribly vague to me).
Rewind to the Edition 5 showcase startups here.
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