Startup Weekend Bangalore’s second edition concluded on Sunday, January 22. A total of 12 teams brainstormed over 54 hours (mostly without sleep) to shape business ideas that ranged from bill payments to an online platform for recycling to gourmet food delivery. Here are some moods from the weekend.
Images: StartupCentral
Editor’s Note: StartupCentral is a media partner for Startup Weekend Bangalore
With barely 24 hours to go before Startup Weekend Bangalore gets underway, here’s an update on what participants can look forward to during the weekend.
Boot Camp
First up is Boot Camp, a feature that is being introduced by Startup Weekend for the first time in India. The camp kicks off on Friday evening at 3.00 pm and is being held at the Google office at Old Madras Road. Microsoft will be taking a session, apart from one-on-one and open sessions with other experts. Follow the link for the detailed agenda. Dinner is pizza.
Mentors & Judges
Participants will get to interact with a host of mentors as they go about building startup prototypes. The list of mentors includes Narasimha Suresh or TeliBrahma, Rajesh Srivathsa of Ojas Ventures, Shaymal Mehta of Techjini and Vivek Ravisankar of InterviewStreet. The judges who will pick the winning startups include Shekhar Kirani from Accel Partners, K Rajinish Menon from Microsoft, Sanjay Anandaram from JumpStartup and Amitabh Shrivastava from Indian Angel Network.
Prizes
Finally, what can you expect to win, apart from building a startup, at the event? A bunch of people have pooled their resources to come up with an array of prizes. Here’s the list:
See you in Bangalore.
Editor’s Note: StartupCentral is a media partner for Startup Weekend Bangalore
Startup Weekend Bangalore, a 54-hour startup networking event where entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs brainstorm on business ideas, returns for its second edition on Janury 20 through 22. Around 100 entrepreneurs are expected to participate in the event, which takes place at the Microsoft premises at Lavelle Road. The organizers expect around 200 entrepreneurs to attend the weekend event and between eight and 12 mini startup companies to emerge from the exercise.
Discount for StartupCentral Readers
StartupCentral readers can avail of a 10 per cent discount on ticket prices. You can click through the logo at the top of this post to register. Enter the discount code ‘GRABITNOW’ to avail of the offer.
Rules & Tools
Some feedback from people who have attended previous editions of Startup Weekend in India:
Gaurav Lochan (SW Bangalore, March 2011) – “I took part in Startup Weekend Bangalore March 2011 because I was contemplating quitting VMware to go join or start a company. At SW Bangalore I pitched an idea, formed a team with strangers which built an android app and a rails site, made a bunch of friends, and managed to sleep a few hours too.”
Sarvjeet Ahuja (SW Delhi, March 2011) - “My hunger for getting into something new and exciting was taken care by the event and its after effects. Prior to that, I was running a small sized software services company, catering to US clients. After the event, I only work for start ups, professionally and personally. This is what I always wanted to do and that single event gave me what I was craving for.”
Also check out the current Bangalore edition’s video teaser:
Editor’s Note: StartupCentral is an online media partner for Startup Weekend Bangalore.
Virtual incubator L-pad, which concluded its first Startup Garage event in Pune early this month, is now bringing the initiative to Mumbai and Bangalore. The event brings together founders and potential founders of startup companies for ideas brainstorming sessions spread over three days. The objective at the end is to come up with prototypes of the ideas presented. Experts from various fields assist with the brainstorming at the garage.
Here are the dates for the next three editions:
Mumbai: June 17 to 19
Bangalore: June 24 to 26
Pune: July 1 to 3
Each edition will have a limit of 40 seats. Application forms available here.
Image Courtesy: L-pad
Last month, Indus Khaitan stepped down from startup accelerator Morpheus Venture Partners to go back to his entrepreneurial roots. He’s signed up as part of the founding team of Sunnyvale-based enterprise mobility startup Bitzer Mobile. The company provides interactive, multi-platform, secure, manageable and native mobile applications for accessing enterprise data. Khaitan, a self-confessed techie, founded Silicon Valley-based Tejit, a discovery engine for user-generated content, in 2007. The startup was acquired by SezWho (acquired by Echo) in 2008. He returned to India that year and set up base in Bangalore with Morpheus to work with young Indian technology startups. In an interview with Startupcentral, Khaitan talks about what prompted the decision to quit Morpheus and his plans ahead. Edited excerpts:
How long have you been thinking of moving on? Why?
About three months, since December. I was getting a little bored with what I was doing. As an investor you have to have a lot of strength not to get involved on the technology side. Entrepreneurs here run very slow overall. The ecosystem is not mature. If you have a new idea, the competition does not exist. Or you don’t have money or vision. That has been nagging me for some time. If I give advice to an entrepreneur, he take his own time. Then I want to jump in and write code. Being a techie I was getting bored not doing things myself. That was the key reason.
How did Bitzer Mobile happen?
I had been brewing the idea of starting a project on my own. Then I found a couple of friends who had started this company in the enterprise mobility area. I knew them from my earlier startup. The vision is to become the RIM (Research in Motion) of the applications economy.
Tell us a bit about the founders of Bitzer Mobile.
Ali Ahmed, who is the CTO of the company, conceptualized the idea about eight months ago and built a virtualization platform for the device. Naeem Zafar, who is the CEO, has led several high-tech startup in Silicon Valley and teaches entrepreneurship at the Haas Business School at the University of California Berkeley. I joined them two weeks ago as vice president of India operations.
Will you move back to the US?
Not immediately. Maybe in a year. We’re setting up an India development center and just did out first hire yesterday. We need to set up a sales organization as well. The development team should have 10-15 people by the end of the year and at least five within a month.
What’s your key takeaway working with entrepreneurs here?
Barring a few most lack the big vision to build multi-crore businesses. It may be because they have not been exposed to a lot a big success stories here.
How can that be fixed?
Well entrepreneurs need to think big. It’s okay to start small but the vision must be big. Second of course is the availability of capital. Kosmix which got acquired by Walmart this month had raised over $55 million from venture capitalists. The point is that money was available. I know smart people at places like Yahoo! India and professors at IITs who have good ideas. But who is willing to take a wild bet on them? If you look at Silicon Valley, most of the brave new world investing is done by investors who have been former entrepreneurs.
Given this environment, what are the survival chances of outfits like Morpheus?
Morpheus is just one part of the game. You need multiple vehicles for sustainable impact. There are about 15-odd venture capital firms investing at the later stages. We need 3-4 times that number at the early stages and another 3-4 times that at the angel and seed stage.
Image Courtesy: Indus Khaitan
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