Monthly Archives: April 2013

The end of the Indian IT Industry as we know it? -by @akkiman

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(This article by Akshay Damle was first published on his blog and is reproduced here with permission for the benefit of PuneTech readers.)

Over the past couple few weeks, I have been reading & thinking about the salary hikes that the companies are doling out. This year, it has been challenging to provide “good” pay hikes to most of the employees and most of them are ending up feeling disappointed, cheated even. There were even dharnas staged because companies could not fulfil their promises of hiring them after graduation.

There was a time in the early – 2000s when the IT industry was the sunrise sector in India. 20+ % pay hikes were very common for even above average performers in organizations. This behaviour carried on till 2008-09 when the global financial crisis unleashed itself. The financial crisis affected most mid to senior level employees and things changed for most of them. Even during this time, young graduates (<3-5 years of experience) would still consistently get “good” pay hikes. They were given to prevent them from jumping ship as the key to success was having good quality resources in your organization and also because it didn’t affect the bottom line much.

The last 1 year has been tough on the Indian IT sector Most companies are reporting flat growth, squeezed margins, and record low utilization levels. A few of the companies have reported that they may not hike their employee’s salary. Most of them are providing single digit pay hikes, quite a departure from the past. Most companies are also reporting record low attrition levels (<5 %). So what has changed? What has suddenly gone so wrong ?

In my opinion, quite a few things have gone wrong. Note that I’m no industry expert: :

The failure of the Indian IT industry to move from performing standard grunt work (Services) to innovation.

Initially, performing “outsourcing” work for global companies in India was highly lucrative. What with low labour costs, low infrastructure costs, and therefore high margins. The failure of these companies was to not divert these profits into more R&D work and instead hiring more and more grads to work on such projects. The “good” raises & hiring by the thousands meant that the margins reduced, quality reduced. The effect was that many of these global companies started moving projects out of India to other lucrative countries like China, Philipines, etc.

Proliferation of sub-standard engineering colleges across India.

Most of the folks in India were enamoured with the wealth that the early IT folk acquired. Everyone had a house (or two), a car, flashy lifestyles etc. Therefore, there was a demand across Bharat to become engineers and move to Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Gurgaon and get into big IT organizations. This meant that engineering colleges multiplied overnight and there were millions of new IT graduates. Most of the big IT companies had such huge requirements that most of them could fulfil this supply of hiring these engineering grads. What most didn’t realize is that it takes years & years of experience before a college can be considered good. You require land, infrastructure, good professors, excellent equipment to be able to impart quality education to students. Most colleges ended up producing half-baked graduates ready to take on the IT world. This has been the failing for many companies & colleges. What makes things worse is that most Universities are very slow to adapt their syllabus. In a fast-moving world of technology, this is a death-knell.

Near constant starting salaries

Ever since I graduated in 2001, the starting salary of an IT graduate has remained more or less the same. Most engineering students from the cities do not accept such salaries but then they have a choice of moving out for further education to the US, etc. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option for most of the folks coming in from middle India. Additionally, 2.5 lakhs p.a. is lucrative for most of these graduates. Most big IT companies are also more than happy to keep this salary constant for the past so many years. So what we now have are sub-standard quality graduates along with folks who are paid less. Not a good thing at all.

Rising costs & degrading urban infrastructure

This isn’t a direct reason for the downfall of the Indian IT but most of these jobs & companies contributed extensively to the tax-revenues of states, and the centre. Unfortunately, this did not translate to quality infrastructure in these urban wastelands. The accompanying real-estate boom & high inflationary rates have ensured that the cost of living increases quite a lot each year & house rentals are on an all-time high. Many of the new young graduates stay far away from the city in order to make rent. This all affects the quality of work.

Increasing credit debt

It’s absolutely sad to see many of these young graduates caught up in credit card debts. There was a time around 8 years back when credit cards were doled out to IT workers as if they were visiting cards. I have seen quite a few colleagues who are stuck in credit card debts, personal loans, etc. Leave aside owning a home, they are struggling to make payments. At the same time, everyone wants the flashy phone, the flashy clothes, good food, etc. It’s appalling to note that many workers don’t even know how Income tax is calculated! So when these guys are offered single digit pay hikes especially when they’ve seen some seniors in the past get 20%+ pay hikes, they are disappointed and get unmotivated. To make matters worse, they can’t switch jobs because no one is hiring at that experience level. This all translates to poor quality of work.

It isn’t all a bad thing though. Many companies have started seeing the big picture and involved in improving their bottom lines. They have started investing more & more into innovation. Some colleges at the top-tier are changing their syllabus on a yearly basis. Also if you can innovate in your job, you still have multiple growth opportunities. Most folks are unaware of the emerging technologies, market trends, global financial news, etc. This is extremely vital if you want to grow in your role. If this is followed, many can still reap the financial rewards and grow. If this isn’t followed, sadly the IT industry isn’t the utopia that it was made out to be.

I’ll end this by saying that there is still hope but yes, the Indian IT industry isn’t what it used to be.

About the Author – Akshay Damle

Akshay Damle is a Pune-based technology enthusiast. During the day, he manages teams that are involved in building scalable payment systems infrastructure. He has over 11 years of experience in building enterprise applications. His interests are following emerging technology trends, current affairs, finance & general knowledge. You can follow him on twitter @akkiman.

Event Report: What markets to do a startup in India – by @dkhare (Lightspeed Ventures)

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(This is essentially a live-blog of Dev Khare’s talk on the Fund Raising Environment in India at the Pune Open Coffee Club. This is essentially a list of bullet points and notes jotted down during the talk, so please excuse the lack of organization and coherence (the fault is mine, not Dev’s). The article is also just a subset of what was talked about but is being published because something is better than nothing.)

If you’re pitching to a VC, better pitch to someone who is already interested in the area that you are doing your startup in. If you have to convince them of the potential of an area, it is an uphill battle, and they will not be particularly useful to you. Also, areas that VCs are interested in tend to be areas where there is a lot of potential money to be made.

With that in mind here are the areas Lightspeed is interested in – and by definition, this are areas that Dev thinks have a lot of potential. So start-ups should go after these areas. Interesting markets and investment themes (The names in parentheses represent companies Lightspeed has invested in):

  • Internet has about 120-150 million internet users. Here, the important theme is networks and marketplaces (Indian Energy Exchange, Fashionara, Limeroad)
  • Mobile has 900 million users, and here direct to consumer business models are of interest (askLaila, and Pune-based Dhingana)
  • Education, with 350 million k12 eligible students, in which education technology platforms are interesting (tutorVista, acquired by Pearson)
  • Financial services, which has 250 million un-banked population, where speciality lending and payments/loyalty are interesting areas (ItzCash)
  • and finally Consumer, with a 150 million middle class in India, and the interesting areas are emerging consumer brands and consumer services (OneAssist).

Mobile is a big and very interesting area. In mobile, there are about 30 million smartphones in India and it could go to 100 million by end of next year. That is a large enough population to build some great companies. The investment horizon of Lightspeed is 5 to 7 years, and if you think that far ahead, there could be 500 million smartphone users in India. Companies serving them have a huge potential. One problem is that it is very difficult to make money in the mobile space, except if you are the service provider. But the money service providers are making from VAS is going down, and that is a business that is dying. So they have to start working with app developers. Vodafone has already started sharing 70% revenues with developers, Idea will do that soon, and others will follow. But remember, they are taking 30% just to allow you to be on their platform – they will not do your marketing. So you still need to do the marketing yourself.

In mobile, various companies have tried to do Indian games (Ramayana games), and that has not worked out. General/betting games like bingo/rummy/poker are doing OK. But this is probably not a big space.

In the mobile enterprise space, there are various problems, including the fact that people bring their own devices, and you have to integrate with various backends. So some horizontal solutions (like email) have gotten traction, but nobody really made much money, because of the competition. So this area is limited – it is more suitable for ISVs and service providers rather than product companies. And one thing you don’t want to do is build a mobile app development framework/platform. 50+ such companies have been funded but none of them are going to make it.

Education is a big and interesting market, where there are lots of pain points, but the biggest challenge is that you cannot sell technology without having to go through schools and colleges and their administrators and trustees and that is a very long and painful road. So it is a big market, but a challenging one.

Question: Why don’t Indian VCs take risk?

Answer: The problem is that there are lots of challenges in the market in India. There are lots of companies who are funded at the seed level who are not going to make it to Series A. And a typical Indian company takes maybe 15 years to give returns, and a VC company cannot really afford to have a number of such investments, since they have a 5-7 year outlook.

Question: There are 7-8 accelerators/incubators in India. What value do they add?

Answer: One of the problems in India is the lack of mentorship in the startup space. There are not too many people who have succeeded and are accessible. (Lots of companies have create a brand (e.g. Zomato, OlaCabs etc) but are still 10 years away from really making it big.) So, all the good accelerators/incubators in India are really run by one person who succeeded and is now trying to give back to the community. And the most important value that the incubator adds is mentorship from that one person. So, if you engage with an incubator, you need to ensure that you do get mentorship from that person. Another thing they do is some branding/marketing in the form of demo days, and just the stamp of approval of being a graduate of that incubator.

Scaling challenges in India: market friction, series of small markets, lack of trust, scarcity of mentors, scarcity of strategic talent, and constricted capital. This ensures that it will take you much longer to grow your company than you think (and than what would be needed in the US).

So how do you grow? You need to figure out your strategy: are you going after India only, or are you going to start from the Indian market and then go to the US market, or some other adjacent market. Another problem is that there are many markets that are really small in India, and there is no point in going after that market (at least for a VC backed company).

Lack of trust is a big problem in India. In general, everybody from banks to entrepreneurs themselves try to protect themselves from fraud that is going to be committed by 1% of the people, and are hence making life hard for the remaining 99%. There are not many people here who are able to think that they are OK with losing money on that 1% but that will be more than offset by the money they make from the remaining people. Everything has to be pre-paid which is another thing that slows down growth. (One solution to the trust problem is to build a brand – and have radio/TV advertisements. See below for more on this.)

Enterprise selling or SMB selling in India is tough. Market sizes are small. Most enterprises in India do not value packaged products, and are unwilling to pay. Even when they’ve agreed to pay, getting them to actually pay is difficult. The sales cycles are very long, and the markets are all very fragmented. Small business lead-generation, subscription (prepaid) companies are doing OK – where it looks like it is a consumer company (like Naukri, Zomato), but is really making money from the small businesses.

It is possible for companies in India to go after enterprises in US. If you’re going to do this, go after a market in the US that is mature, self-service oriented, and SaaS. An example is ZenDesk. You need to build a very easy self-service product, with a very easy on-ramp, it should be easy to pay and easy to use. Druva started off that way. There are 10 other good companies in India doing this. (Note: self-service for the Indian market does not work. It has to be feet-on-the-street, and that will only scale after 10/15 years, and it will still be a mid-sized company.)

Question: Which city should I be in to do a startup?

Answer: If you’re doing a tech company, you should be in Bangalore or Delhi. Pune is OK – investors have started showing an interest, and Bombay is close enough. Places like Chennai and Hyderabad also have hopes. But if you’re anywhere outside (e.g. Lucknow), you need to move.

Question: What are your thoughts on education as a space?

Answer: If you’re in the education space, you need to be in the curriculum, not as something supplemental. Also, it is very difficult to sell to parents directly – you have to sell via the schools. Remember, selling directly to the consumer in this space is very difficult unless you have a brand and strong marketing. Another point, if you’re selling to schools, your product does not really have to be that good – you don’t have to be good at student outcomes, you have to be good at selling to schools. So invest in a sales team, and not so much in the product. Distance education / e-learning is an interesting area. Also online assessments are an interesting area – like doing tests for Infosys for recruitment, or exams for schools.

Question: How come there isn’t much investment in India for clean energy?

Answer: One of the issues is that the VC community wants to invest in areas that have high margins and low capital expenditure. They like to do a few million dollars to do an experiment, validate the market and then scale the business. By contrast, energy is an area with lots of capital investment and long gestation periods. It takes 5 to 7 years for the science to work, then the real product starts, and then there are other challenges. So this is a problem everywhere in the world. In the US there was a clean energy bubble a few years back but that has burst, and those VCs have fled. And in India, the situation is worse – whom do you sell the energy to, in India? The government, which is a problem.

Question: How do you get advertisers, especially from the US?

Answer: First, you need to have scale before advertisers are interested. If you have less than 10 million monthly unique, don’t even bother – it’s a waste of time. Just focus on scaling your traffic. Once you have reached those numbers, there are various options open to you, including outsourcing the sales of your ad inventory to third parties.

No consumer company in India can really succeed without a physical infrastructure of some sort. And that is painful, difficult and slow. But once you’re able to do that, then you can really leverage that well, and it becomes a barrier to entry. Another issue in India is that a consumer company really needs to build a brand (because of the trust issue mentioned earlier). Hence, it is a good idea for a consumer company to start spending on radio/TV ads early. But remember, do not try to scale before you have a microcosm of your business working in a profitable, sustainable way in a small way. i.e. get something working well in Pune, and then scale to 20 cities.

Question: Should startups go after existing markets, or create new markets

In India, the only real way to grow a company is to grow your category. You cannot really simply survive on steal a market away from others – you have to grow the market. And for this, you need to evangelize your market – use the ecosystem to do this. And this takes time – so you need to raise a lot capital and then go big.

Question: What are some areas in which entrepreneurs should not do startups

These are some areas in which entrepreneurs keep trying to start companies, inspite of the fact that there is no real hope for anybody in that area: Development tools (framework for mobile app development, library/framework for easy software development), e-commerce and daily deals (this area is overfunded), unified communications.

Question: Where to get seed investment from

List of active seed investment groups in India: Blume Ventures, Harvard Angels, India Internet Fund, India Quotient, Indian Angel Network, Jungle Ventures, Kae Capital, Morpheus, Mumbai Angels, Qualcomm Ventures, Seed Fund, Venture Nursery, Yournest.

Pune Becoming an Innovation Hub – Financial Times

News,

Financial Times thinks that Pune is becoming an innovation hub.

The city’s economy (and real estate market) is now driven by the presence of two large and growing sectors: automotive manufacturing and information technology.

Why is the Pune story so compelling? First is the ecosystem already in place:

Willy Praet, a Belgian expat who moved to Pune nearly five years ago, is managing director of the India operations of Kongsberg Automotive, a Norwegian automotive components manufacturer. He says he found “the perfect supplier base for our products in Pune and the 50km area surrounding it.”

Second is the easy of recruitment, since we have over 40 engineering colleges:

“Also, the presence of engineering colleges makes recruitment easier.”

And, Bombay the financial and commercial capital of the country is very expensive and easily accessible via the expressway. It quotes Samir Patil, founder of http://Styloot.com on this point:

“We chose Pune because the cost of living is low, and the quality of life is high. Mumbai was unviable because the costs of living for the developers would have been too high and we wouldn’t have found the technology talent. And had we been in the US, we would not have been able to create this depth of technology with seed funding.”

And, Pune is also one of the top cities in India if you’re interested in design:

Hrridaysh Deshpande, the director for the DYPDC Centre for Automotive Research and Studies, agrees that Pune is poised to become a hub for innovation. “There are more than 70 design entrepreneurs, several design schools and many clients. We plan to apply for ‘world design capital’ status for Pune, to the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.”

Obviously, there are challenges, the primary among them being the lack of infrastructure. The traffic, lack of public transport, and the lack of an international airport are cited. But, on this point, the article quotes builder Rohit Gera’s stoic approach to the city’s shortcomings:

“My definition of a developing nation is a place where people live before the infrastructure is in place,” he says, suggesting that it is only a matter of time before the roadblocks to growth are removed.

Read the full article

Global Windows Azure Bootcamp – 27th April

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On April 27th, 2013, you’ll have the ability to join a free Windows Azure Bootcamp at Persistent on SB Road. This is a one day deep dive class that will get you up to speed on developing for Windows Azure. The class includes trainers with deep real world experience with Windows Azure:

Agenda

  • Session 01: 10:00 AM-11:00 AM Windows Azure Overview – by Laxmikant Bhole from Accenture. Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is a mature and enterprise ready cloud for various solutions. This session will be a overview of various offerings in the Microsoft Azure platform including hosting, storage, database, media, networking, messaging, routing , authentication services. Come and join this session to see Windows Azure in action and get an complete overview along with internal specifics & latest enhancements on the platform.
  • Tea Break : 11:00 AM – 11:15 AM
  • Session 02: 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Windows Azure IaaS: Technical Overview – by Aviraj Ajgekar from Microsoft. Join us for a tour of the features that make up the Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks offerings, which collectively make up Windows Azure’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) support. Using demonstrations throughout, we will cover the Virtual Machine storage architecture and shows how to provision and customize virtual machines, configure network connectivity between virtual machines, and configure site-to-site networks that enable true applications that span from on-premises to Windows Azure. In this session we cover the significant investments that Microsoft is making in our Windows Azure Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution and how it works. We discuss how you provision, deploy, and manage Virtual Machines and Applications in Windows Azure. The session spends time covering both the new management portal and PowerShell management options.
  • Session 03: 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM: Storage Options in Windows Azure. – by Vikram Pendse & Kiran Khambete from Accenture. In this session you will learn various Storage Options provided by Windows Azure.This session will be an overview of various Storage offerings like Blobs,Queues,Tables and SQL Azure.This session gives a guideline to leverage these Storage options especially in Enterprise and Large Scale Line Of Business Applications.We will also discuss about scenarios of storing Structural,Relational Data and Nonstructured Data followed by Demos.
  • Lunch Break: 1:15 PM – 2:00 PM.
  • Session 04: 02:00 PM – 3:00 PM Deep Dive into Windows Azure Mobile Services. – by Mayur Tendulkar from Zevenseas. In this session, attendees will get to introduce to about Windows Azure Mobile Services. Attendees will get to know feature provided by Azure Mobile Service like Data, Push Notifications, Email Service, etc.. Using these services, we’ll build a Windows Phone application and leverage these platforms to create nice mobile applications.
  • Session 05: 03:00 PM – 4:00 PM: BigData analysis with HD Insights for Windows Azure and Windows Server – by Monish Darda from Icertis. In this session, Monish will discuss how BigData is changing the world and introduce you to some exciting things that you can do with BigData using HDInsight and Microsoft Business Intelligence. He will also demonstrate how PolyBase can be used to enable integrated querying across Hadoop and relational data with SQL Server 2012.
  • Tea Break: 04:00 PM – 4:15 PM
  • Session 06: 04:15 PM – 5:15 PM: Building Hybrid Cloud Environment using Windows Azure & System Center – by Aviraj Ajgekar from Microsoft. In this session we will explore how can you build a true hybrid cloud solution using Microsoft solutions. We will leverage best of both the worlds & explore some of the scenarios where you can leverage System Center 2012 SP1 along with Windows Azure to build a hybrid cloud solution. We will discuss how can you build & manage different workloads in Windows Azure & System Center 2012 SP1 to build your hybrid cloud strategy.

About the Speakers

Aviraj Ajgekar

Aviraj is a Computer Engineer from Mumbai and is currently working with Microsoft Corporation India as a Technology Evangelist. In his present role he is working with IT Professionals across India evangelizing Microsoft Technologies. Primarily he focuses on Microsoft Core IO Technologies such as Windows Client Platform, Windows Server System, Virtualization, System Center, Private Cloud & Public Cloud.

A real blogger, he is very compulsive about adding his thoughts to online blogs, forums, community and media. He blogs regularly at http://blogs.technet.com/aviraj He a regular speaker at various Microsoft events such as Microsoft TechEd, MS TechDays, Virtual TechDays, Microsoft India Webcasts etc.

In his spare time he likes to spend time with his family, hang out with friends & listen to rock music. He’s also passionate about photography and long drives. You can follow him on twitter @aviraj111

Kiran Khambete

Kiran is Technology Architect working with Accenture India Development Center,He has around 13 yeards of industry experience with proficiency in various Microsoft Technologies. He is passionate about Microsoft Technology and core member of AUG (Avanade User Group) within Accenture India. He is also responsible for architecting and implementing various solution based on Microsoft Technologies.

Laxmikant Bhole

Laxmikant is a Technology Architect at Accenture, India and has about 17 years of industry experience with proficiency in various Microsoft Technologies. In his current role, he leads Windows Azure capability in Accenture India and is accountable for architecting and implementing Azure-centric solutions. Laxmikant is as well active in technology community and have been participating and presenting in multiple technology events on Windows Azure topics.

Mayur Tendulkar

Mayur Tendulkar works as a Local Type Inference (for outsiders: Consultant) at Zevenseas, Pune (India). As a Local Type Inference, he has worked in various technologies like .NET, ASP.NET, Windows Mobile/Phone, SharePoint, HTML5, JQuery and currently Windows 8. He has been an active volunteer/member of Pune and Mumbai User Group. He was a Microsoft Student Partner and Lead from 2008-2010. He has delivered numerous sessions at various colleges and corporate trainings at various organizations. He has been a speaker at Microsoft Community Days, TechDays, Virtual TechDays, DevCons, and many others. He loves listening to 80s/90s Angrezi and Bollywood songs. He always say that, “My first crush is .NET, first love is Windows Mobile. But I’m married to Windows Phone and having an affair with SharePoint”

Monish Darda

Monish is the CTO and co-founder of Icertis, a leading provider enterprise solutions on the Microsoft Cloud. Monish has more than 20 years of experience in application and systems software development and the architecting of enterprise distributed systems. Along with Unmesh, he co-founded Websym Technologies in 1998. He set up and headed the India R&D operation of Storability, an enterprise storage management startup from Boston. Storability was eventually acquired by Sun Microsystems and Monish then founded and led the India R&D of BladeLogic, another East Coast startup, helping build a highly scalable enterprise platform for server management in the data center. BladeLogic was acquired by BMC Software after a successful IPO, and Monish contributed to BMC’s cloud management vision, laying the foundation for some of the early pioneering work on cloud resource management and provisioning, and is co-inventor of two patents in this area.

Vikram Pendse

Vikram is SME working with Accenture AIR Capability, He has around 6 years of industry experience with proficiency in various Microsoft Technologies such as .NET Web Platform, Silverlight, Windows Phone and Windows Azure. He is Microsoft Most Valuable Professional since 2008 and One of the Core Member of Pune User Group. In his current role, he works as SME in Azure Integration Renewal (AIR) Capability of Accenture India and is accountable for implementing Azure-centric solutions and Migration Solutions for legacy Apps to New .NET Framework. He is passionate about Windows Azure, Windows Phone and Windows 8 Application Development.

Giveaways from Global Sponsors

  • JetBrains: ONE (1) winner at each event gets a license of one of their products. The winner may choose from ReSharper, dotTrace, dotCover, PhpStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ IDEA, AppCode, WebStorm.
  • PluralSight: ONE (1) winner at each event will get a 1 Year Annual Subscription. ALL Attendees will get a 7 Day training pass via an unique code.
  • Telerik: ONE (1) winner at each event will get a DevCraft Complete (all their products).
  • Cerebrata: ALL Attendees will get a license to the new Azure Management Studio product. There will be an email address they can use to request it.
  • Blue Syntax: ONE (1) winner at each event can win a Cloud Backup Advanced Edition license.
  • MyGet: ONE (1) winner at each event can win a 1 year Starter Subscription. ALL Attendees will get a 1 month starter subscription redeemable via an online sign up form.
  • Cloud Berry: FIVE (5) winners at each event can win a Cloud Berry Explorer License. FIVE (5) winners at each event can win a Cloud Berry Drive License.
  • AzureWatch: ALL Attendees will get a free 30 day unlimited license, redeemable via an unique code..
  • Inner Workings: ALL Attendees will get 90 days Free Training, redeemable online.
  • Zudio: ALL Attendees will get a 3 month free trial redeemable via an unique code. ALL Organizers will get a 1 year subscription.

Register

The event is free, and anybody can attend. But registration is required

The event is on Saturday, 27th April, 2013 from 09:30 AM – 05:30 PM, at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd. Bhageerath, 402, Senapati Bapat Road.

Persistent

Twitter

Globle twitter hashtag for this event is: #GlobalWindowsAzure

use this # tag while you twit about this event. Do mention #PuneUG or @PuneUserGroup in your twit if you participating in Pune event and twiting about Pune Event

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Building world-class technology companies – Helion VC – 24 April

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Helion VC, TiE Pune, POCC, and YourStory.in have organized a panel discussion on “Building world-class technology companies” on 24th April, from 5pm-8pm at Le Meridien Pune. A panel discussion on Scaling Technology Companies will have these panelists:

  • Sanjeev Aggarwal, Co-Founder Helion and Daksh
  • Nitin Kulkarni, COO, Persistent
  • Sanjay Katkar, Co-founder & CTO, Quick Heal
  • Rajeev Goel, Co-founder & CEO, Pubmatic

Another panel discussion on Raising Venture Capital will have these panelists:

  • Ritesh Banglani, Director Helion
  • Swapnil Shinde, Co-founder and COO, Dhingana
  • Vishal Gupta, Founder and CEO, Seclore

This will be followed by a networking session over cocktail.

About this Event

This event is free open to all. Register here

The event is from 5pm to 8pm on Wednesday 24th April, at Le Meridien.

Fund-raising Environment in India: by Dev Khare, Lightspeed Ventures – 24 April

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The Pune Open Coffee Club has organized a talk by Dev Khare of Lightspeed Venture Partners on Wednesday, 24th April where he will talk about the areas of interest for venture investors and the current fund-raising environment in India at the seed, early-stage and growth stages. He will also discuss key challenges that he sees many startups in India facing across multiple verticals and growth strategies to overcome some of the hurdles.

About the Speaker – Dev Khare

Dev Khare is at Lightspeed Venture Partners in New Delhi and invests in Internet, mobile and software companies. He currently serves on the board of Dhingana, a leading Indian music streaming service.

As part of Silicon Valley venture fund Venrock, he has served on the boards of, among others, Slideshare (acquired by LinkedIn), Lavante (enterprise SaaS) and Aha Mobile (acquired by Harman).

Dev co-founded Covigo, a mobile application platform company, which was acquired by Symbol Technologies (now part of Motorola) in 2003. He has also been a product manager at CrossWorlds Software (enterprise integration software) and Aditi Technologies (eCRM).

Dev has an MBA from Harvard Business School and tweets at @dkhare.

About Pune Open Coffee Club

The Pune Open Coffee Club (POCC) was started to encourage Startup Founders and those connected to Startups from Pune to organize real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. At this time (April, 2013), POCC has over 9300 members including investors, lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups.

About this Event

This event is free and open to all. Register here

The event is from 5pm to 7pm on Wednesday 24th April, at Conference Hall no. 6, MCCIA, 5th Floor, ICC Trade Towers, SB Road.