Pune OpenCoffee Club
From PuneTech
The Pune OpenCoffee Club is an attempt to establish recognized, open and regular meeting places where entrepreneurs can meet with investors, advisor's, (and anyone else) in a totally informal setting.
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.
As of this writing (November 2009), POCC has 1583 members - mostly people who have their own startups, or thinking of starting up, or interested in working for a startup. See the current list of members.
POCC is very active - with at least one offline meeting every month, and sometimes more. Typical meetings are attended by about 50 to 90 people. The POCC mailing list has almost 900 members (as of November 2009) and is very active with discussions regarding issues faced by Pune startups.
Contents |
[edit] Sub Groups
Due to the large size of POCC, it has now become possible to find substantial numbers of people interested in specific niche areas, and hence, smaller sub-groups with a specialized focus are forming. As of this writing (July 2009), the most active sub-groups are:
- POCC-Education: All startups/entrepreneurs interested in the education sector
- POCC-Koregaon Park: All those in or near the KP area
- PIRST: POCC Information Retreival and Semantic Technology group
For more details of these and other groups, see the POCC Groups Page
[edit] Links
- Website: http://punestartups.ning.com
- Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/punestartups
- Jobs board: http://groups.google.com/group/punestartupjobs
- Info about POCC events: http://punetech.com/tag/pocc
[edit] Articles
- Pune Startups meet a success
- Have Energy Unlimited
- POCC meeting (Footprint Ventures and Google) report
[edit] People
POCC was started by Santosh Dawara and Anjali Gupta of Bookeazy. The full list of members is here. Nick Karnik created the mailing list.
There is no official structure to POCC. Anybody can call for a meeting, and anybody can suggest events to be held. Just start a discussion on the website forums or the mailing list and you are good to go.
