Tag Archives: venturecenter

Pune engineer’s solar-powered crop irrigator covered by MIT Technology Review

Pune-based Padmakar Kelkar has developed a solar-powered crop irrigator that can be a huge boon for farmers in these times of failing monsoons and 14-hour rural power cuts.

I had no idea what pivot irrigation is, so I looked it up in wikipedia, and to save you the trouble, I’ve copied the relevant paragraph here:

Center-pivot irrigation (sometimes called central pivot irrigation), also called circle irrigation, is a method of crop irrigation in which equipment rotates around a pivot. Central pivot irrigation is a form of overhead (sprinkler) irrigation consisting of several segments of pipe (usually galvanized steel or aluminium) joined together and supported by trusses, mounted on wheeled towers with sprinklers positioned along its length. The machine moves in a circular pattern and is fed with water from the pivot point at the center of the circle. The outside set of wheels sets the master pace for the rotation (typically once every three days). The inner sets of wheels are mounted at hubs between two segments and use angle sensors to detect when the bend at the joint exceeds a certain threshold, and thus, the wheels should be rotated to keep the segments aligned. Centre pivots are typically less than 500m in length (circle radius) with the most common size being the standard 1/4 mile machine (400 m). To achieve uniform application, centre pivots require a continuously variable emitter flow rate across the radius of the machine. Nozzle sizes are smallest at the inner spans to achieve low flow rates and increase with distance from the pivot point.

MIT’s Technology Review (India Edition) covered this a couple of weeks back (the same article also appeared as a featured innovation in DARE magazine). Kelkar’s technology was one of the featured innovations in the IITB-Alumni Association’s Innovations conference in 2008 that happens every year in Pune. (By the way, Innovations 2010 is happening in a couple of weeks – you should consider attending).

The TechReview article points out the advantages of this irrigator:

The solar panels charge the battery, and this in turn runs the machine when there is no sun. “We have run the machine 19 hours continuously without solar energy at all,” says Kelkar. The use of solar panels could be a boon for farmers in those states that get ample sunlight but not enough electricity.

Other advantages include water savings of about 30-50 percent over other pivots, zero land erosion, 30-50 percent more yield, higher return on investment, and minimum labor requirements. Compared to the drip irrigation, Kelkar’s pivot is more cost-effective. “Drip irrigation may cost around Rs 35,000 an acre, whereas my machine costs around Rs 45,000 an acre. But the cost in case of drip irrigation includes laying it out in the field every time and taking it out once it gets damaged, and you may have to spend another 15 percent every year. On a long-term basis, the cost of my machine comes out to be much less,” he adds.

Having already spent 20-25 lakhs of his own money in developing the technology, Kelkar is now looking for funding to start commercial production. One of the sources he is considering is the Government of India’s Technopreneurship Promotion Programme (TePP). (PuneTech had covered TePP about an year back.

In his efforts at finding funding, he is being helped by Pune’s Venture Center. You can see all of our coverage of Venture Center’s activities here. Thanks to @kaushikgala for tipping us. Also, you can follow MIT Technology Review’s India Edition here.

How to build a ‘sustainable’ startup: by Samir Patel – Nov 28

The Pune Open Coffee Club and Venture Center, Pune presents a talk by Samir Patel, on what are the characteristics of a startup that will ultimately become an enduring company. The talk is on Saturday, 28th November, from 10am to 12noon, at Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. Map. (To reach Venture Center, go past NCL towards Pashan, pass the cricket ground adjacent to NCL and then you’ll find NCL Innovation Park / Venture Center on the right hand side.) This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Elements of Sustainable Companies

Start-ups with these characteristics have the best chance of becoming enduring companies.

Clarity of Purpose

Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.

Large Markets

Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.

Rich Customers

Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.

Focus

Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.

Pain Killers

Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.

Think Differently

Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.

Team DNA

A company’s DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. “A” level founders attract an “A” level team.

Agility

Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.

Frugality

Focus spending on what’s critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.

Inferno

Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.

About the Speaker – Samir Patel

Samir Patel founded SearchForce that helps manage search marketing campaigns in a burgeoning $6 billion yearly online advertising market with its algorithmic trading platform. At iPIN, later acquired by Valista for $50+ million, he designed the world’s first open scalable mobile payments platform. Samir also crafted the go-to-market strategy for eBay‘s apparel division, which is now a $500 million business unit and growing. He devised efficient systems for Stanford Graduate School of Business in the area of analytics, courseware management and security.

Much quoted in CNN, BusinessWeek, Reuters and Mercury News, Samir has a B.S. in Computer Science and an MBA in Brand Marketing from Cornell University. He teaches entrepreneurship and new venture creation courses at the University of California at Berkeley and at the Small Business Administration.

During his 2009 sabbatical, he walked solo for a 1000 kilometers in the wild Himalayas and along the Narmada river with two pairs of clothes and little money. He heads various projects at Manav Sadhna (http://www.manavsadhna.org) and GramShree at Gandhi Ashram at Sabarmati, Ahmedabad.

Click on the Venture Center Logo to see all PuneTech articles about Venture Center
Click on the Venture Center Logo to see all PuneTech articles about Venture Center

About Venture Center

Entrepreneurship Development Center (Venture Center) – a CSIR initiative – is a not-for-profit company hosted by the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Venture Center strives to nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the Pune region in India. The Venture Center is a technology business incubator specializing in technology enterprises offering products and services exploiting scientific expertise in the areas of materials, chemicals and biological sciences & engineering.

See the profile of Venture Center on the PuneTech Wiki for more information.

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC

About Pune Open Coffee Club

The Pune OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, startups, developers, startup advisors and investors from Pune to organize real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. Our members also include lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups.

POCC is different from other organizations aimed at Entrepreneurs (like CSI Pune, SEAP, TiE Pune, NASSCOM Pune) mainly because of the informal format, and also because of the fact that it is free (i.e. there are no membership fees, and there are no entry charges on individual events). In other words, anyone could announce and arrange a networking event at the cafe round the block. Thanks to the informal approach, the group allows wacky ideas like the startup lunch initiative to be popularized.

See the profile of POCC on the PuneTech Wiki for more information.

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The Venture Center Library for Entrepreneurs and Innovators in Pune

Pune’s resource for startups, the Venture Center has yet another service that could be valuable for Pune’s startups. The Venture Center Library has been created specifically to support and enhance the entrepreneurial ecosystem in and around Pune. They are targeting entrepreneurs, scientific researchers, technology innovators, IP & technology commercialization professionals and venture investors to take advantage of their collection of books, periodicals, reports and research services.

Click on the Venture Center Logo to see all PuneTech articles about Venture Center
Click on the Venture Center Logo to see all PuneTech articles about Venture Center

Here are key features of the Venture Center Library:

  • ~ 1000 books – with an emphasis on technology innovation, commercialization & entrepreneurship
  • Many *good* magazines (MIT Tech Review, SciAm, etc.)
  • Book collection listed online & searchable: http://www.vcenterlibrary.org/book.php
  • Increasing data base on electronic articles and e-books
  • Open Mon-Sat, ample parking
  • Internet access, scanning, etc. available
  • Events featuring books, videos, etc. http://www.vcenterlibrary.org/events.php

If you just want to browse/read books at the library itself, it is free until the end of 2009, and after that it will cost Rs. 400 per year. If you want to check out books, there’s a Rs. 2000 refundable deposit and a Rs. 400 yearly fee – which allows you to check out 2 books for up to 14 days each. Look here for details of membership and fees.

About Venture Center

Venture center is an incubator mainly targeted towards startups in biotech, chemical and material sciences. It has been set up using government funds, and is housed in NCL‘s premises, but is planned as an independent entity that needs to become self-sustaining in a few years (based on taking equity/fees from the startups it helps). Check out the venturecenter tag on PuneTech for all PuneTech articles about Venture Center.

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38 organizations where a tech startup can apply for funds

The Venture Center is a not-for-profit technology startup incubator hosted in the National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune. One of the services they provide their incubatee startups is a guide to the various government funds and schemes that a technology startup can avail of at different stages of their development, depending upon meeting certain criteria.

This is information that most entrepreneurs are not aware of. With this in mind, Venture Center has put out this guide to the Financing Landscape in India for Technology Ventures. This guide is a must read for all startups interested in funding.

You can simply browse this information, and read the rules and regulations of each of these 38 funds/organizations. Or, if you want to be handheld your way through the maze, you can avail of Venture Center’s advisory services.

For more information about Venture Center, you can see PuneTech’s interview of Kaushik Gala, the business development manager for Venture Center.

IIT-B-AA Presents: Introduction to the Venture Center incubator – 10 July

What: IIT-Bombay Alumni Association Pune presents an introduction to the Venture Center (see recent PuneTech coverage of Venture Center)
When: Friday 10th July, 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. To reach Venture Center, go past NCL towards Pashan, pass the cricket ground adjacent to NCL and then you’ll find NCL Innovation Park / Venture Center on the right hand side. Map
Registration and fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Details:

Venture Center is an incubator housed in NCL Pune, created with the purpose:

“To nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises for India by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the region”

Kaushik Gala, Business Development Manager at Venture Center is looking for all innovators in the areas of biology, chemical, and material sciences. The IIT-Bombay Alumni Association of Pune has organized a talk by Kaushik at Venter Center to speak about their activites

For more information about Venture Center see recent PuneTech coverage of Venture Center.

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Venture Center – Pune’s incubator for startups in biotech, chemical, materials sciences

Kaushik Gala, Business Development Manager at Venture Center is looking for all innovators in the areas of biology, chemical, and material sciences.
Kaushik Gala, Business Development Manager at Venture Center is looking for all innovators in the areas of biology, chemical, and material sciences.

Venture Center is an incubator housed in NCL Pune, created with this purpose:

To nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises for India by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the region.

Envisioned Future: To be the organisation that will be credited with creating, shaping and sustaining a “Pune cluster” of innovative technology businesses with a significant economic impact regionally, nationally and globally within the next 20 years.

To find out more about Venture Center, we interviewed Kaushik Gala, the Business Development Manager of Venture Center. Here are excerpts from the interview:

1. What is Venture Center?

Entrepreneurship Development Center (‘Venture Center’) is a technology business incubator approved by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. Venture Center is incorporated as a Section 25 not-for-profit Company established under the Companies Act 1956.

Venture Center was setup with support from the Department of Science & Technology – National Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Development Board (DST-NSTEDB) and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL) (constituent lab of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research).

2. What are the services that Venture Center will provide incubatee companies?

Venture Center provides:

· Infrastructure – Dedicated labs, shared work-benches, analytical facilities, offices, hot-desks, etc.

· Advisory – Intellectual property, business planning, startup nuts-and-bolts issues, etc.

· Fund-raising – Seed stage fund raising from various sources including government agencies (eg. MoMSME), professional investors, etc.

· Technology commercialization program (‘Lab2Mkt’)

· Information and learning center – Library, databases, workshops, seminars, etc.

3. At what stage do you expect innovators and/or startup companies to approach you?

We offer resources and services at all stages of an early-stage technology startup – ranging from idea/conception, to prototype to Series A/B financing.

4. Obviously you are not interested in incubating any and all startups? Can you describe, with some examples, what sectors you are limiting yourself to?

Our focus is on the areas of material, chemical and biological sciences and related engineering / software ventures. However, some of our services are open to all individual entrepreneurs and startups.

Specific examples include startups that have commercialization technologies related to surgical implants, membranes for water purification, CFD and modeling solutions, etc.

5. Are the innovators expected to move to Pune, into your facility, to avail of any of your services?

For startups that need our infrastructure facilities, being located in Pune is obviously preferable. However, for services such as advisory and fund-raising, they can be located outside Pune as well.

6. How is Venture Center funded? What are your long-term funding plans?

Venture Center is funded via:

· A grant from DST-NSTEDB for start-up costs and operational expenses for the first 5-years

· In-kind support from NCL

· Donations from well wishers

After the fifth year of operation, Venture Center is expected to become self-sufficient. Besides generating revenue from a variety of services, our long-term funding plans include:

· Raising capital from governmental agencies and professional investors to set up an early-stage (‘seed’) fund for investment in technology ventures

· Raising grant funds from governmental and corporate agencies to expand our services portfolio

· Partnering with other R&D labs, domestic/foreign incubators, etc.

You can find out more about Venture Center at its website which is packed with a huge amount of detail. Information about the executive team behind Venture Center is here.
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