Monthly Archives: March 2014

Tech Events this Week: Intro to Python; DrupalCamp; Ruby Hackathon; Docker; WordPress

Events, , , , , ,

Here is a list of technology events happening in Pune over the next few days. To be informed of these events in advance, you should subscribe to get the PuneTech calendar event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe.

BioPune Seminar: Commercializing Technology – Retrofittable Digital Radiography Systems

  • Date: Fri, 4 Apr 4:00pm – 5:30pm
  • Location: Training Room, Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road

BioPune Seminar Series Talk # 5

Taking technology ideas from concept to commercialization: The case of Retrofittable Digital Radiography Systems by Dr. Sreeram Dhurjaty, President, Dhurjaty Electronics Consulting LLC, and Co-founder, Jeevtronics Pvt. Ltd.

Abstract

During the last 10 years, retrofittable radiography systems have created a revolution in Radiography. These systems that are the thickness of screen films have allowed traditional “Analog rooms” to be converted to “Digital Rooms” easily and seamlessly.

This talk traces the development of the first ever digital radiography system, first developed by Eastman Kodak and now sold by Carestream Health. One of the primary inventors of this system is the Author of this talk.

The evolution of the concept will be discussed. This will be followed by the challenges in the various technologies that were needed to realize the product. These include mechanical challenges, power conversion, the scintillator and detector, automatic exposure detection, and wireless, to name a few. Other challenges include the effect of temperature differences on the image. Image processing and rendering techniques as well as image transmission will be discussed. The challenges of commercializing this technology from the research lab to a commercial system will be detailed. This system has been a trailblazer which has instantiated various companies into selling retrofittable radiography systems. Recent advances in this field will be detailed during the latter part of this presentation.

About the speaker – Dr. Sreeram Dhurjaty

Ram held senior positions in engineering and research, in medical systems, at Eastman Kodak Company, Analogic, and Bose Corporation before embarking on a career of full time consulting. He was educated at IIT Bombay and Yale University and has degrees in Civil Engineering, Fluid mechanics, Electronic Instrumentation, Biomedical Engineering, and Control System Theory. Over his career he has designed medical systems such as Patient Monitors, Defibrillators, CT scanners, Fetal Monitoring systems, Digital and Computed Radiography, Telemedicine, Telerehabilitaion and precision analog circuitry for medical systems.

He has 15 issued patents in areas of medical devices and systems. He is passionate about affordable medical devices and is working on a hand-cranked defibrillator. He works closely with the Engineering World Health Organization (EWH.org) developing medical devices for undeveloped countries. He also consults on, in addition to power supplies for medical systems, efficient power supplies, and converters for small wind turbines.

Ram is also one of the co-founders of Jeevtronics, Pvt Ltd., Pune and is developing an affordable hand-cranked defibrillator for low and middle income countries.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://vcevents.pandaform.com/pub/m8qggl/new

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

Python Pune Meet: Python 101: Introduction to Python

  • Date: Fri, 4 Apr 6:00pm – 8:00pm
  • Location: BMC Software, Tower A, ICC Tech Park, SB Road

This month, we are conducting a Python 101 by Rudrasen Sitoleh

The tutorial will be conducted using Python 2.7, make sure you have python installed on your laptops, before you come for the tutorial.

To install python, you can follow the instructions given on python.org. Make sure you install the latest version available in the Python 2.7.x branch. Please do not install Python 3.x series for this tutorial.

Note:

  • Follow all instructions given by BMC staff
  • Kindly keep your laptop serial numbers handy, as you will be required to enter them at the BMC reception.
  • Please ensure that you are at BMC reception, a minimum 15 mins before the event starts.

About Python Pune Group

Python Pune is a group of people interested in Python development. You can join our mailing list for the discussions, and we have regular meetings. See the Python Pune Website for more information.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/PythonPune/events/174633282/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events.

DrupalCamp Pune 2014: 5/6 April

  • Date: 5- 6 Apr
  • Location: SIMS (Symbiosis Institute of Management Studies), Range Hills, Pune

Drupal in Pune started back in February 2009 as Pune Drupal User Group (PDRUG), with an objective to strengthen the local Drupal community in Pune. The first meetup saw 3 Drupalers, in last year we have been able to engage Drupalers in monthly code sprints where focus is on on D8 core contributions. In addition to code sprints, Pune community has also organised global training days and specialized workshops for Pune colleges.

The first Drupal Camp Pune was organized back in 2009. In this first camp there were 300+ attendees. One of the fun highlights of the Drupal Camp Pune 2009 was the Drupal Song which featured in Dries’s blog :), we soon followed up Drupal Day/Hackathon in presence of Addison Berry (former documentation lead, Drupal). Between 2010 and 2014, Drupal community has been focusing on a lot of Drupal meet ups and now its time to have a bigger event: “Drupal Camp Pune 2014.”

What to expect?

In Drupal Camp Pune 2014 you will meet some of the earliest contributors to Drupal in India from around the country. For developers and students, the event presents opportunities for learning, getting involved in community contributions via code/ review/ QA for Drupal 8. One of the main objective of this camp is to engage students more personally in a ladder like workshop. For the business community there will be an opportunity for learning from sessions based on case studies of Drupal websites, meeting representatives of the leading Drupal companies in India, and some of the brightest individuals working on Drupal.

What should I bring in Pune Drupal Camp?

Just come with Open mind and laptop with Drupal 7 installation. You can follow instruction over here.

Keynote – Jacob Singh

Jacob is the country head for Acquia India where he manages all alliances, business development and services in the region. He is an experienced trainer, project manager, developer and scrum-master with 14 years of experience building great web experiences, seven with Drupal.

One of the early Acquians(2008), Jacob holds the distinction of working in the most departments. He has been an integral part of the Acquia Search and Drupal Gardens products, a recognized Drupal trainer and consultant and a solution architect.

Important dates:

  • Call for Papers starts on 12th March, 2014 and ends on 27th March, 2014
  • List of Accepted sessions to be announced on 29th March, 2014
  • Actual event is on 5th and 6th April

Call for papers

DrupalCamp would love to get your proposals for sessions to be delivered in Drupal Camp Pune. You may select any topic from the poolof development, design or anything interesting that you would like to share. Last date for submitting your proposal is 27th March, 2014.

Call for papers: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/session/add

Call for Sponsors

Not only does a platform like Drupal Camp make the community stronger, but it also contributes to grow economic ecosystem. By Sponsoring Drupal camp you show your commitment to Drupal and the community at large.

Become a sponsor: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/sponsor-camp

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/user/register

Event website: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

(Paid) Pune Ruby Users Group Meetup: One day offsite at Lonavala

  • Date: Sat, 5 Apr 10:00am – 6:00pm
  • Location: Velvet country resort Lonawala, Vikas Valley, S. V. Road, Near P.W.D. Resort House, Khandala

Talks

  • 10am – 12.30pm: Hackathon on Brails http://brails.org
  • 12.30pm – 1.30pm: Lunch
  • 1.30pm – 4pm: Hackaton on Brails.
  • 4pm onwards: party time & networking. maybe go for a swim, play cricket etc.

About Pune Ruby Users Group

Pune Ruby Users Group is a Meetup Group for all developers interested in Ruby (not necessarily Rails). For more information see the meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/PuneRailsMeetup/

Fees and Registration

Expenses : Rs. 800 per person excluding travel charges. Please pay the organisers when you arrive there.

This event is open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/PuneRailsMeetup/events/173779012/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events.

SEAP Book Club: New Age Leadership – by @MaheshBaxi

  • Date: Sat, 5 Apr 10:00am – 11:30am
  • Location: Hall 5, A Wing, MCCIA, ICC Towers, SB Road

Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) has a Book Club that meets on the first Saturday of most months, where one of the senior executives from the Software Industry in Pune gives a presentation based on a popular book.

This month, Mahesh Baxi, (CEO and Founder of PurpleGear Software, previously, MD of Thoughtworks India), will talk about his own book “New Age Leadership”.

About SEAP – Software Exporters Association of Pune

The Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) is an organization that consists of large to small software export companies in Pune. SEAP acts as a single body representative for the software companies and puts forth its proposals and demands for larger IT related issues with the concerned authorities. SEAP also provides an umbrella under which various technical and marketing issues can also be discussed along with a learning opportunity provided within the member companies. SEAP promotes itself and its activities to the outside world (both within and outside the country) in order to boost the software business from within the Pune region. SEAP publishes and distributes material necessary for the promotion of its existence and objectives. Finally SEAP also endeavors to increase employee interaction within the member companies by organizing various sports events, cultural and extra curricular activities whereby a healthy competition between the various companies can be maintained.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register by sending a mail to rsvp@softexpune.org.

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event with the organizers. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

Docker Pune Meetup: Intro to Docker; Docker Remove Client API

  • Date: Sat, 5 Apr 10:30am – 12:45pm
  • Location: Red Hat Software Services (RHSS), Level-1 Tower-10, Cyber City, Magarpatta City, Hadapsar
  1. Introduction to Docker – by Navid Shaikh (@SwordPhilic)
    • This session is aimed for folks joining meetup for first time or new to Docker.
    • This session will cover, introduction, hands on CLI for Docker,Docker Index, working with Docker Index, building an image from Dockerfile.
  2. Docker Remote API Client Libraries (python) – by Navid Shaikh

About Docker Pune Meetup Group

Meet developers and ops engineers using Docker in Pune. Docker is an open-source engine for building and deploying cloud applications as standalone containers which can run on any server – from the VM on your laptop to the largest EC2 compute instance, and everything in between. Docker is a great building block for deploying web apps, database services, service-oriented architectures, and so on. Learn more about Docker at http://www.docker.io

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/Docker-Pune/events/173706202/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

WordPress User Group Pune Meetup

  • Date: Sat, 5 Apr 5:00pm – 7:00pm
  • Location: Cafe Coffee Day, Ground Floor, Gold Big Cinemas, Kalyani Nagar

Let’s discuss our love for WordPress and how we can contribute back to community

About the Pune WordPress User Group

This group is for anyone interested in discussing WordPress, be it users, developers, bloggers or beginners. We intend to meet every month, one of the item in every meetup would be to decide the agenda for next meet up .

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/Pune-WordPress-User-Group/events/167954292/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

Turing100 Lecture: Talk on the Life and work of Edsger Dijkstra

Events, Featured, , , , , , , ,

Persistent System presents a talk on the life and work of Turing Award Winner Edsger Dijkstra, on 22 March, 2pm to 5pm, at the Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, SB Road.

In 1972, Edsger Dijkstra was given the Turing Award for fundamental contributions to programming as a high, intellectual challenge; for eloquent insistence and practical demonstration that programs should be composed correctly, not just debugged into correctness; for illuminating perception of problems at the foundations of program design. Dijkstra is famous for his graph algorithms (shortest path, minimum spanning tree), for writing the first Algol-60 compiler, which was the first high level language with explicit recursion (which was implemented using stacks), structured programming, and a whole lot of important contributions to practical and theoretical computer science.

He is also the guy who killed the goto.

In this event, Ravindra Naik, Principal Scientist at TRDDC Pune, will touch upon some of the contributions of Dijkstra like – Design of Algorithms, Program Design, Programming Languages, Formal Specification & Verification and OS & Distributed Processing.

This will be followed by a talk on “Art and Science of Programming” by Shailaja Shirwaikar HOD, CS Nowrosjee Wadia College. The talk will present Dijkstra’s programming methodology. From writing short, readable and efficient programs to illustrating his point through the choice of apt examples, Dijkstra was an artist programmer. Structured programming, developing loop invariants to separation of Concerns, and Dijkstra’s emphasis on formalism in development of programs has eventually lead to the Science of programming. The formal approach of program development gives the programmer the confidence in the program developed by him and debugging would be unnecessary. Dijkstra believed in disciplined method of programming which is very relevant to the students of programming.

The event is free for everyone to attend. Register here

About the Turing Awards

The Turing awards, named after Alan Turing, given every year, are the highest achievement that a computer scientist can earn. And the contributions of each Turing award winner are then, arguably, the most important topics in computer science.

About Turing 100 @ Persistent Lecture Series

This is year 2 of the the Turing 100 @ Persistent lecture series. The series started in 2012 to celebrates the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth by having a monthly lecture series, and the success of the talk series in year 1 has resulted in the series being continued in 2013. Each lecture is be presented by an eminent personality from the computer science / technology community in India, and covers the work done by one Turing award winner.

The lecture series has featured, or will feature talks on Ted Codd (Relational Databases), Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn (Internet) Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (Unix), Jim Gray, Barbara Liskov, and others. Latest schedule is here

This is a lecture series that any one in the field of computer science must attend. These lectures will cover the fundamentals of computer science, and all of them are very relevant today.

All the slides and videos of all the talks in the last year are available here.

Fees and Registration

The event will be at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, SB Road, from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday 22 March.

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here

DrupalCamp Pune on 5/6 April; Call for Speakers is open

Events, Featured, , , ,

The Drupal Community in Pune presents DrupalCamp Pune on 5/6 April 2014, a conference for Drupal developers and users. This is a free conference, and open for anybody with an interest in Drupal in particular, or web development / PHP in particular.

Call for papers

DrupalCamp would love to get your proposals for sessions to be delivered in Drupal Camp Pune. You may select any topic from development, design or anything interesting that you would like to share. Last date for submitting your proposal is 27th March, 2014.

Call for papers: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/session/add

DrupalCamp Background

Drupal in Pune started back in February 2009 as Pune Drupal User Group (PDRUG), with an objective to strengthen the local Drupal community in Pune. The first meetup saw 3 Drupalers, in last year we have been able to engage Drupalers in monthly code sprints where focus is on on D8 core contributions. In addition to code sprints, Pune community has also organised global training days and specialized workshops for Pune colleges.

The first Drupal Camp Pune was organized back in 2009. In this first camp there were 300+ attendees. One of the fun highlights of the Drupal Camp Pune 2009 was the Drupal Song which featured in Dries’s blog :), we soon followed up Drupal Day/Hackathon in presence of Addison Berry (former documentation lead, Drupal). Between 2010 and 2014, Drupal community has been focusing on a lot of Drupal meet ups and now its time to have a bigger event: “Drupal Camp Pune 2014.”

What to expect?

In Drupal Camp Pune 2014 you will meet some of the earliest contributors to Drupal in India from around the country. For developers and students, the event presents opportunities for learning, getting involved in community contributions via code/ review/ QA for Drupal 8. One of the main objective of this camp is to engage students more personally in a ladder like workshop. For the business community there will be an opportunity for learning from sessions based on case studies of Drupal websites, meeting representatives of the leading Drupal companies in India, and some of the brightest individuals working on Drupal.

What should I bring to Pune Drupal Camp?

Just come with Open mind and laptop with Drupal 7 installation. You can follow instruction over here.

Keynote – Jacob Singh

Jacob is the country head for Acquia India where he manages all alliances, business development and services in the region. He is an experienced trainer, project manager, developer and scrum-master with 14 years of experience building great web experiences, seven with Drupal.

One of the early Acquians (2008), Jacob holds the distinction of working in the most departments. He has been an integral part of the Acquia Search and Drupal Gardens products, a recognized Drupal trainer and consultant and a solution architect.

Important dates:

  • Call for Papers starts on 12th March, 2014 and ends on 27th March, 2014
  • List of Accepted sessions to be announced on 29th March, 2014
  • Actual event is on 5th and 6th April

Call for Sponsors

Not only does a platform like Drupal Camp make the community stronger, but it also contributes to grow economic ecosystem. By Sponsoring Drupal camp you show your commitment to Drupal and the community at large.

Become a sponsor: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/sponsor-camp

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/user/register

Event website: http://camp2014.punedrupalgroup.com/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

Pune has more tech and startup events each month than there are days in the month. Because of the large volume, information about most of our events is not posted to the PuneTech blog – they directly go to the PuneTech Calendar. Please sign up to get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free), or follow @punetech on twitter.

Rdio acquires Pune’s Dhingana to Enter India Market

Miscellaneous, News, , , ,

MediaNama is reporting that international streaming music startup Rdio has acquired Dhingana in a bid to enter the India market.

This is really less of an “acquisition” and more of a “fire sale” (or an aquihire):

Sources also told MediaNama that the amount being offered to Dhingana is lower than the amount of funding they had raised. Dhingana had shut down its operations in February 2014 a couple of months after the biggest music label in India, T-Series, decided not to renew its contract with the company. In December, after reports that Dhingana might shut down, [CEO] Bhatia had told MediaNama that the company was in the process of restructuring its operations. He had at that point had declined to comment on the possibility of a shut-down.

Dhingana was backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, but had also raised funding from Helion Ventures and Inventus Capital prior to this.

The founder of Dhingana will join Rdio team:

founders Snehal Shinde and Swapnil Shinde will be joining the Rdio team, where they will be responsible for Rdio’s expansion efforts in India as well as other emerging markets. Rdio India will be launching later this year.

Rdio provides ad-supported and ad-free online music streaming services in 35 countries:

Created by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis in 2010, it last raised funding in 2011, when it then received $17.5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners, along with earlier investors Skype, Atomico Ventures and Friis himself through some of his investment entities.

One interesting aspect of this acquisition for PuneTech readers is the technology aspect of it. There will, hopefully, soon be APIs for us:

Open for developers in India? Rdio has an API that can be used by developers to create music oriented apps. Internationally Shazam uses these APIs, but the company has a tie-up with Saavn in India for music recognition services. It’s not clear what will happen to that deal once the acquisition is completed. Gaana had also launched a similar API last month and had invited developers to submit app ideas on its website.

Read the full article

Startup Conference TiECON Pune 2014 – 12 April; with keynote by Rajiv Bajaj

Events, Featured, , ,

TiECON Pune 2014, the second TiE Pune conference aims to bring together entrepreneurs, investors and industry, foster generation and discussion of entrepreneuri
al ideas, and develop a sustainable entrepreneurial infrastructure within Pune.

TiECON Pune will be held in Westin Pune, from 9am to 6pm on 12th April. Click here to register – before tomorrow 15th March to avail of the early bird discount. (Use the coupon code TiE-PuneTech to get a discount.)

Check out the agenda for the event. Highlights: 40+ Speakers, including a Keynote by Rajiv Bajaj.

Why Attend?

At TiECon Pune 2014 chances are you’ll come face to face with business’ leaders, entrepreneurs & industry luminaries. It will be a great opportunity to hear & interact with industry experts and explore:

  • New frontiers for the entrepreneurial journey
  • New enablers and support systems
  • New markets for seeking success

Stay connected and we’ll update you as soon as registrations open.

Who Should Attend

Entrepreneurs are passion-people. This event is for these passionate individuals. You could be passionate about technology, services, mobile, consumers, internet or engineering. But if you’re passionate about the future – you should be here.

Fees and Registration

The charges for the event range from Rs. 1599 for early bird TiE Pune members, to 3000+ for non-member late birds. If you’re not a TiE Pune member, you can use the code “TiE-PuneTech” to get a discount as a “Member of Supporting Organization”. The early bird discount ends on 15 March (tomorrow).

Register here

Quick Heal plans initial public offer in Dec-Jan – Financial Express

Money Matters, News,

Financial Express reports that Pune-based computer security software products company Quick Heal is planning an IPO in Dec-Jan.

This is likely to be Pune’s first software product company IPO, unless Pubmatic manages to do an IPO before that (which is still quite possible).

Excerpts from the article:

In 2010, the Pune-based company was valued at Rs 600 crore, when Sequoia invested Rs 60 crore for a 10 per cent stake.

Sales have grown from Rs 10 crore a decade ago, to over Rs 215 crore in FY 13 and expects to cross Rs 250 crore mark in FY 14, Katkar said.

“Over a span of 20 years the company’s R&D has focused on computer and network security solutions. We now plan to expand new products range with the launch of new version of end point security (EPS) in July-August this year. We are also offering data loss prevention and mobile devise management to our customers,” Katkar said.

The company has more than 8 million customers in 60 countries. The company has strong global presence with offices in Dubai, Japan, USA and Kenya. It plans to strengthen the staff strength in these offices and looking at opening new office in Europe and Australia in the near future, he added.

QuickHeal, which claims a 35 per cent market share in India’s consumer anti-virus market, was founded by Pune-based brothers Kailash Katkar and Sanjay Katkar.

Read the full article

Call for Proposals: Pune Scala Symposium 12 April

Events, Featured, , , , ,

On April 12th, Thoughtworks Pune will play host to a day-long conference on Scala in Pune, and the call for proposals is now up. Here are some examples of topics that you can submit talks on:

  • experience reports from commercial projects (what worked, what did not and insights from implementing Scala on the project)
  • experience reports contributing to open source projects or consulting projects
  • demo/introduction to a library/tool/framework/technique

Propose a session now!

If your talk gets accepted, ThoughtWorks will sponsor your travel (domestic) and stay.

Who should attend:

If you are an existing user of Scala or other functional programming languages or if you are curious to know more about Scala and want to find out how other companies are using Scala, come join the Pune Scala Symposium. You will get to meet Scala enthusiasts from across India, discuss and learn from each other.

Venue:

ThoughtWorks India Pvt Ltd, 6th Floor, Binarius Building, Deepak Complex, National Games Road, Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerwada, Pune.

Follow @punescala on twitter, and join in the conversation using #punescala.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://info.thoughtworks.com/pune-scala-symposium-april-12-registration.html.

Food and refreshment drinks will be provided. Attendance is free of charge. Seats are limited, so sign up now!

If you have any questions write to punescala@thoughtworks.com or you can reach out to Mushtaq Ahmed on +919850099687.

Interview with @NexusVP, the most active tech Venture Capitalists in Pune

Featured, Interview, Money Matters, , ,

Venture Capital firm Nexus VP, with 8 investments in Pune, is not only the VC firm with the largest presence in Pune, but conversely, they also seem to love Pune, with more investments here than any other city, including everyone else’s darling Bangalore.

Recently, Sandeep Singhal wrote this in a tweet:

Pune has the most product oriented culture. With 8 investments plan to spend more time there.

and soon after that, Nexus held an event in Pune showcasing 3 of their portfolio companies. With this much invested in Pune, and more activities planned, we decided to talk to Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus to find out more about their Pune love affair.

How many companies have you invested in Pune? Can you name them?

Currently 8 of our companies have offices in Pune : Pubmatic, Druva, Sedemac, Helpshift, Uniken, and 3 others that will be announced in time

What attracts you to Pune? What would you say about the Pune start-up ecosystem, in comparison with other cities?

We consider Pune as a key technology hub in India. We find very high quality start-ups in Pune. They are either starting up in Pune or are setting up engineering offices here very early on in their life cycle to tap onto the superlative engineering talent in the city.

What are you plans for 2014-15?

We plan to continue / increase our focus in Pune, hope to interact and partner with many more exceptional entrepreneurs in Pune in coming years.

What technologies do you see as most exciting for the next few years?

We expect that exciting startup opportunities will be unearthed at the intersection of different technology trends like mobility, cloud and big data, applied to all facets of life spanning but not limited to health and wellness, education, enterprise IT, retail, home automation, industrial automation, agriculture, etc. That said, rather than being thesis driven, we are fundementally bottoms up investors looking to partner with passionate entrepreneurs who create category defining companies.

What would your top-3 recommendations (advice) be for an entrepreneur?

  • Instill the sales DNA in yourself. No matter what your background might be, as an entrepreneur you would always need to sell : to your customers, to your prospective hires and employees, to your investors.
  • Always look to hire better than yourselves.
  • Less is more. It’s much more important to figure out what features your product should Not have than what features it should have. Start-up that thrives does One thing right and better than anyone else, that addresses one key pain-point felt by a big enough target set of users / customers.

According to you, what is the #1 mistake that most first-time tech startup founders make?

Point #3 above. Tech start up founders have the propensity to start building out the technology / product, without really understanding that key One thing that is needed in their target market, that they have a competitive advantage one. Achieving product – market fit is quite different than developing the technology. Key is focus and saying ‘no’ to features much more than saying ‘yes’.

Interview with @KevinHenrikson of @Acompli, hot mobile startup with Pune connections

Interview, , ,

Mobile email startup Acompli has been in the news recently for raising $7.3 million in funding.

Kevin Henrikson, co-founder Acompli, has a long history with Pune, and Acompli has a 4-person team in Pune which is expected to grow. Kevin is visiting Pune this week, and we took the opportunity to interview him for the benefit of PuneTech readers.

Can you give a quick overview of Acompli as you see it?

iPhone Email Just Got a Promotion. Acompli allows professionals to take more action with email on their mobile devices. Leveraging the full capabilities of smartphones, Acompli uniquely combines advanced email, full calendaring, file sharing, predictive search and smart contacts into one powerful app. Request an early invite to the iPhone app at http://www.acompli.com

Can you give an overview of Acompli’s development activities in Pune and overall – in terms of team size, composition, and responsibilities?

Vishwesh Jirgale leads a team of 4. The focus is identical to those in the San Francisco, CA USA office. Make Acompli the best place to work for those focuse on solving the hardest problems for professionals on mobile using email. Team is made up of experienced experts in both the email and mobile space.

Specifically, can you give details of the technology stack you’re working on, the kinds of skills that your team has, and generally the cool technology challenges you’re tackling?

We’ve got a very modern tech stack. Server side Java running on AWS talking to mailboxes on both Gmail and Exchange. We have a Python based Frontend device API proxy and a custom binary TCP based protocol that delivers lightening fast dat to our iOS Objective C client. In short we use the best tech for the task and are very focused on both end-user UX and speed of the application.

How did Acompli land up in Pune? Can you talk about the structure, and other important aspects of this relationship?

9 years ago I started a team in Pune for my last company Zimbra. After 12 trips to Pune in the last 9yrs it’s become like my second home. I know so many people and have so many friends it was an obvious choice for us when starting Acompli. Vishwesh and I connected via mutual friends and we quickly assembled a team from within our networks. Having a team in both Pune and San Francisco is a huge advantage to a small company like Acompli. We get 24/7 coding and operations support. We also get to hire the best talent from two super strong software cities.

Doing geographically distributed development is always a challenge – how are you tackling this problem at Acompli Pune?

Number #1: Hire great people. Great communicators, great engineers. The rest really just falls into line. Also you need to spend time together. I’ll be back in Pune the first week of March. This constant face-time with the team is the best way to build a strong team and great relationship. It’s also the best way to recruit. We are looking to hire a Sr Java Platform engineer and a Sr Android engineer. For communication we use Google Hangouts. It works really well.

(Kevin is visiting Pune this week. Those interested in meeting him should get in touch with him or Vishwesh)