On March 2, as Chennai was feeling a transition from the passing winter into incoming summer, the heat was being felt inside the auditorium in IIT-M Research Park. The occasion was fourth edition of Startup Super Day of TiE Chennai and at the Pitch Fest 10 startups pitched to judges like Sramana Mitra of the 1M/1M
It was August 1997. Naveen Lakkur was close to three years into his marriage, but his entrepreneurial venture hardly left him any time to spend with his wife. But an invitation from his friend’s in-laws to spend the long Independence Day weekend with him and his in-laws, made Naveen pack his bags and head to Chennai. Little did he know this trip will change his life forever. In Chennai, after visiting a temple, Naveen and his family went to MGM Dizzy World, a theme park. His love for water, made Naveen enter the splash pool at the theme park. As he slid into water, people who are already in the pool splashed water on his eyes. These are not light splashes but very harsh sprays of water.
As the audience settled down on their seats after navigating through an unseasonal downpour to reach the venue (Grant Hyatt Regency), they had an unexpected task at hand. They came to listen, applaud, and some give and some take away the awards. Instead, a wine taster, Anish, ascended on the stage to command the audience [...] Read More
It’s how you look at it. That famous half glass of water. That’s how panellists at MobiSparks viewed the existing situation on mobile in India. Apps are the big drivers of this mobile “hype” but that overenthusiastic excitement about apps was toned down by Sanjay Anandram, the moderator, who said that mobile investment happened first in 2001 and now mobile has become tablet. Talk of ROIs on these investments. No big deal. In 1999, Goldman Sachs predicted India’s Internet user base would be 100 million by 2005 but only in 2011 or so did we just cross the magical figure. Now it is 137 million according to Google.
This proposition starts with the same disclaimer as Ravi Gururaj pronounced beforehand – results not guaranteed. The just-before-lunch sessions usually are the dullest with the audience exasperated at the long session and eagerly waiting for lunch. Ravi Gururaj, VP at Citrix, got the audience excited MobiSparks with his ideation vectors taking Dropbox as an example. As Ravi was just taking us through the vectors, I felt how intuitive it was. I was just thinking how I could eliminate e-mail by sharing my files with my customers on Dropbox. But you can create only one folder and many sub folders in Dropbox. You cannot have multiple Dropboxes.
The Sourcebits Founder’s Workshop Overawe’s the Audience at MobiSparks We hear about whiz kids in the media who do the unthinkable. They get degrees when they are 15, write books when they are 12, and all that. Rohit Singal stayed in stealth mode most of the time after he founded Sourcebits in 2006 and his [...] Read More
The salubrious weekend weather in Bangalore was just a perfect setting to a day that was unveiled with the important message of the day – how to raise money for your mobile venture. An entrepreneur himself and later playing a game-changing role at Airtel, Mohit Bhatnagar, MD, Sequoia Capital, rolled in some visible trends before [...] Read More
The recently concluded NASSCOM Product Conclave pictured the product software community in a state of transition from an “underground movement” to the mainstream. The Zinnov survey added to the excitement of the community that finally product is happening in India. According to the survey, there are 3402 software product companies in India at present. And [...] Read More
In50Hrs, the idea-to-prototype event held quarterly in The Startup Centre Chennai, went north for the first time, to Delhi. Techies swarmed One97 Communications office like a honeybee to a flower to try their wares. Aditya Vikram Thoomati, who facilitates the event at The Startup Centre, is quite excited at what he experienced hosting the event [...] Read More
The fourth edition of NASSCOM Product Conclave drew to a close brimming with hope of a “revolution” of product software technology in India. The fervent ground activity happening among product tech community, which now has close to 3000 startups, is bound to translate into a bigger, better stage in another five years. Now the cycle times are low and one big development can set off a chain reaction (as Suresh Sambandam of OrangeScape told me sometime back in a private chat). For example, if one product technology company gets acquired at a star valuation or if a few companies hit a revenue in the order of millions of dollars. We now have billion dollar earning services companies. Instead of “we will set a revolution” talk until last year, we are now hearing “the revolution is setting in” kind of talks by experts this year.
