Startup Saturday, the second in the city, was a fun evening. Carwale co-founder and CEO Mohit Dubey took the pre-coffee session which turned out to be a candid affair. The company is in the throes of a big offline services push and much of the conversation picked on the whys and why-nots of taking a pure online business offline. It took Dubey two months to convince even his investors that offline was the way to go, particularly since profits margins are initially low.

Also met a couple of new online startups over coffee — Menu Fry and Blogadda (isn’t that name too close for comfort to Bigadda?). The first, as the name suggests, is a restaurant menu listings site. The site is still in beta and theoretically it is a very useful service, particularly in Mumbai city. Let’s see how Menu Fry works out in the real world. Also check out Pune’s Tasty Khana, which is built on a similar premise. I remember the company because of a rather patchy demo at BarCamp Mumbai 3 in March. Blogadda has been around a bit longer, maybe a year, and offers blog listing services — much like Blogstreet.

Image Courtesy: Carwale