All posts by Navin Kabra

Beanbags, wi-fi, and founders hanging out: The Startup Centre is coming to Pune

Update:: The startup center website points out: Launching on May 2011 in Chennai. Entity Structuring in Progress. If interested, do get in touch. Pune plans tentatively by end of 2011.

The Name Vijay Anand, also known as The Startup Guy, is familiar to most startups in the country as the creator of India’s best known startup showcase event proto.in. Vijay is now working hard on his next initiative: The Startup Centre. For a description of the startup centre, we turn to http://thestartupcentre.ning.com the social network for the startup centre, and we find the following overview:

So What Can you Expect out of the Startup Centre?

The Startup Center is a "(physical) community center for startups", and is an initiative of Vijay Anand (of proto.in fame). Click on the logo for more information about The Startup Center

The Startup Centre, would be a community space for Entrepreneurs, and everyone who has a spark of imagination (artists, designers, hackers), ideas and the talent and ability to execute it. If you are a one man team, or the founding team of a concept or startup, you can drop by the centre to use the facilities at a nominal fee every month – or if you are visiting from out of town – or want to check out the place, take a 24 hour access pass and use the facility. The centre will have facilities such as conference rooms, brainstorming rooms, and will also be a regular host to barcamps, and other technology/entrepreneurship/design workshops that will benefit the community. Dont be surprised if you walk in and do see a jamming session going on – by the musically inclined.The Centre also aims to play host for the other players of the ecosystem such as Accountants, lawyers, PR professionals, Venture Capitalists and Industry Mentors on a regular basis (supported on Patronage by these groups), to strengthen the support system around entrepreneurs and startups.

What the Startup Centre is Not

The Startup Centre is not a co-working space for startups to come and run their entire operations out of. This is probably only going to make sense till the stage where you are no more than just the founding team, you can afford to work in a room with nothing more than bean bags, wifi and whiteboards and to crank out the initial prototype.

Obviously, since Vijay is based in Chennai, the first edition of The Startup Centre will come up in Chennai, and the deadline for that is September. However, the most interesting thing we learned was that the second startup centre, slated for the end of 2010 is Pune. This obviously piqued the interest of PuneTech and we contacted Vijay to find out more about The Startup Centre.

Here is a short interview with Vijay about the thought process behind The Startup Centre:

Can you explain the idea behind The Startup Centre?

The notion of the startup centre came from three things:

  1. People need a space where they can bounce their ideas off a group of people – like a barcamp setting – get feedback and iterate on it. There is no such space like that today, and we thought we should have one.
  2. Everytime people from very different fields come together, some brilliant things happen. And for a startup environment – it would be sad not to tap into the diversity of population that places like Chennai and Pune have – to bring together hackers, designers, entrepreneurs, artists etc under one roof.
  3. There is a need for a physical space where people can “hang out’, learn about starting up – cause most of us in someway or the other found such a space – for me literally it was the Entrepreneurship centre in Canada where I dropped by whenever i had questions, used the resources etc. Here’s hoping we do such things here in India.

“Startup” can mean many different things – it could be a person with a full-time job who has a startup idea in his head, or a couple of guys working out of their homes, or it could be a small team that has a make-shift office in a flat, or even a 20 to 50 person company with a decent office space. Which of these will The Startup Centre target?

We are not an incubation centre. In the words of Alok Mittal, one of the advisors for The Startup Centre, “Its a fun place where creativity is initiated.” Its also a great place as long as its just the founding time looking to connect with such people, get a bit of confidence and finalize on their idea and maybe build out a prototype. Once you are ready to go beyond just the founding team and take on team members, you are probably better off in a incubation centre or on a space of your own – you should focus on your product and company and not get distracted. We mean startup quite literally, where idea becomes something tangible.

How would you define “success” for The Startup Centre? What kind of impact are you hoping to achieve, and how do you plan to measure it?

30 odd starting up teams working out of the space, being the host for events like Open Coffee Club, DevCamps, Barcamps, etc, and getting enough diversity of people – apart from just IT – that’d be the success of the centre in the first phase of its life. I have a feeling that a space like this will democratize entrepreneurship, new ideas, movements to people outside the tech sector and to those outside incubation centres. The momentum of the volunteering that goes into making this space successful, all of that will contribute to how much people gain out of association.

You’ve picked Pune and Chennai as the first two cities where The Startup Centre starts? Can you shed some light on the thinking process behind that decision?

I think Pune is the hottest space for startups in the country today. And it would be great if i talk less about it and keep it a secret cause what makes Bangalore a bit on the high maintenance side for startups is because of the hype around it.

I think a space where startups can thrive need students – quality students, people from diverse backgrounds, low cost of living, close proximity to a bigger metro. I think Chennai and Pune fit the bill quite well. The reason behind these two cities is also cause its not bangalore – where you necessarily dont need a centre to bring together people – there is lots of things happening as it is.

Presumably, you’re looking for an appropriate space in Pune for The Startup Centre. Can you give us an idea about what kind of a space you’re looking for? How big? Have you short-listed any specific areas of the city for this?

We are really figuring this bit out. Chennai will give a lot of insights onto this – so in a way Pune will have a much better centre than Chennai for sure – because the learnings from here will go into that. For Chennai, we are looking for roughly around 2000 – 3000 sq feet of space, preferably a hall type setting, close enough to coffee places and access and not in an IT Park. There is something about IT parks that seems to sober everyone up – the centre should ideally do the reverse of that. For Chennai we are thinking close enough to the IT corridor – in Pune, would very much like the support of the folks there to help out.

Will The Startup Centre focus on any particular sector or type of startups (e.g. IT startups), or will it welcome all types?

We are initially focusing on Internet, Mobile and Software. Cause it seems we have the capacity to guide and its known territory. We have been getting quite a bit of enquiries from artists in Chennai who want to figure out new ways of distributing music and trying out models around it, so I think local flavors will very quickly add into it.

How can the Pune startup community help with this initiative?

Very much so. I have already been getting a lot of support from Santosh and Anjali of Lipikaar / Dubzer on this regard. I plan to visit Pune sometime. We would like for the local community to in a way run it and which city other than Pune in India today has that strong a startup community to run it? We launch the centre in Chennai in Sept, give till Nov, to start work in Pune. If all goes well, hopefully we’ll see the new year with one in Pune as well.

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6 events in next 4 days: science, maths, cleantech, IP and open source

The events in Pune in the next four days are a great example of the diversity of Pune in the “science and technology” sector. Far too often, we assume that technology means software technology, but Pune does have much more. NCL is one of the top institutes in the country for chemical technology, and has a history of coming up with chemical science breakthroughs that make it into commercial products. Today, a scientist from NCL will give a talk on the patent and other intellectual property issues that scientists and small businesses should know about. The Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana is a great institute of Mathematics, and it regularly schedules very interesting talks for people interested in Mathematics. (And if you’re a software engineer who is not interested in Mathematics, you should be ashamed of yourself.) Monday will have a talk on probiotics – the use of bacteria and other micro-organisms in industrial waste treatements and other cleantech. And by the way, if you’re interested in finding out what other world-class institutions Pune has, (and it’s a huge number!), check out PuneTech’s top ranked websites of Pune page.

Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about events in Pune
Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about events in Pune

And all of this is in addition to our usual talks on open source (the Pune Linux Users Group), issues for small startups (the Pune Open Coffee Club), and Microsoft Technologies (the Pune User Group).

This weekend – try to get exposure to a different science & technology community than the one you normally hang out with.

Here are the details:

Jul 3, 2010: Ancient Indian Combinatorial Methods – by Prof Sridharan CMI at Bhaskaracharya Pratisthan

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 11:08 PM PDT

Professor Sridharan, Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai, will
give a lecture at Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana.

Topic: Differences in Style but not in Substance: Ancient Indian
Combinatorial Methods

This lecture is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Jul 5, 2010: PuneCleanTech event: Probiotic applications in CleanTech at Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:21 PM PDT

PuneCleanTech is proud to present an enlightening talk on ‘Probiotics in CleanTech’ on July 5th, 2010 at 4:00pm at the NCL Innovation Center. The talk will be presented by Dr. Pillai, a renowned authority on the subject. This event is supported by Fusiontech Ventures and NCL Venture Center.

As you know, Probiotics is the use of beneficial micro-organisms to increase the health, vitality and efficiency of various animal processes. The same techniques can be applied to Industrial activity in areas such as soil remediation, effluent treatment, waste management etc. The talk will focus on such applications of Probiotics.

The talk will be suitable for all entities that are actively dealing with such technologies (such as Praj) or might benefit from their applications to industrial and municipal waste management. As a result, institutions such as MCCIA and Pune Municipal Corporation might benefit from this talk. If you agree, please canvass it within your or affiliated organizations.

This broad-ranging talk should be interesting also for concerned citizenry (such as ecological society) and the scientific/technological elites (such as NCL), as well as, educational and research institutes.

As always, the talk is free but the seating is limited to first 60 people. There is no RSVP and the seating will be on a ‘first at the door gets the first chair’ basis 🙂

Jul 2, 2010: Venture Center’s IP Center Event: IP overview by Dr. Tiwari of NCL IP Gropu at Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:18 PM PDT

Dr. Nitin Tiwari, a scientist with NCL and part of the NCL IP Group will talk about Intellectual Property. The focus will be general awareness of IP for small and medium enterprises.

This is a free event . It is open to all

Jul 3, 2010: POCC Meet: “Contracts and Intellectual Property” at GrubShup

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:15 PM PDT

Are the following significant problem areas for your startup?
* Non-payment from clients who have already taken delivery (ITES, other domains)
* Intellectual Property (trademark violations, copyright enforcement)
* Industry Ethics, price cutting by competitors (who then don’t deliver quality)

Our next meetup is focused on how entrepreneurs deal with these issues.

Attending Counsels:
Kaushik Kute http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kaushik-kute/8/b26/1bb

This is a free event. Anybody can attend. Register here: http://punestartups.ning.com/events/event/show?id=1988582%3AEvent%3A35767&xg_source=msg_invite_event

Jul 3, 2010: Pune Linux Users Group – Monthly Meeting at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 09:11 PM PDT

PLUG meeting for July is scheduled on Saturday 3rd July, 4 pm @ SICSR

These are the details:
Location: SICSR, Atur Centre, Model Colony.
Room No 704. 7th floor ( room no. may change )
Time: 4 pm

Agenda:

1. We will have a talk on distributed version control and TeamGit by
Abhijit Bhopatkar. Abhijit Bhopatkar is the author of TeamGit
(http://www.devslashzero.com/teamgit).
Audience: Anyone interested in version control
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revision_control), TeamGit, and/or
contributing to an interesting Qt project.
2. Open discussion and QA session

This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Jul 3, 2010: Microsoft Community Tech Day at Shekhar Natu Hall

Posted: 29 Jun 2010 07:24 PM PDT

Agenda:
9:00am – 9:30am Registration
9.30am – 9.45am Tea Break
09.45am – 10.00am Keynote
10:00am – 11:00am What’s new in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP 1 – Aviraj Ajgekar
11.00am – 12.00pm Setting Up Remote Access Service on Windows Server 2008 R2 for VPN – Dev Chaudhari
12.00pm – 01.00pm Lunch
01.00pm – 02.00pm Introduction to Forefront Identity Manager 2010 – Mayur Deshpande
02.00pm – 03.00pm Deploying application using Application Virtualization (App-V) – Ninad Doshi
03:00pm – 04:00pm Tea Break & Networking

This event is free for all to attend. Register here: http://www.communitytechdays.com/Registration1.aspx?Status=NotFound&login=offline

Using bacteria in cleaning up our Industry – PuneCleanTech event on Probiotics – July 5

What: Probiotics in CleanTech by Dr. Sivaramakrishna Pillai
When: Monday, July 5, 4pm
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. Map: http://bit.ly/VenCen (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.)
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Free seating on First Come, First Seated basis only
Further Info: Contact Harshad Nanal (harshadnanal@gmail.com), Anil Paranjape (amparanjape@gmail.com)

Probiotics in CleanTech

PuneCleanTech is a special interest group (SIG) of PuneTech focusing on clean tech. Click on the logo to go to the PuneCleanTech website for more details

Did you know that we have discovered a number of bacteria and other micro-organisms that can help improve our digestion, prevent colon cancer, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, improve immune function, prevent infections, and a whole bunch of other health benefits?

This same “technology” can also be used to clean up our Industry. They can be used to treat industrial waste, and clean it up in a “clean” manner. They can help restore ecological disasters brought upon by our consumption.

Probiotics is the use of beneficial micro-organisms to increase the health, vitality and efficiency of various animal processes. The same techniques can be applied to Industrial activity in areas such as soil remediation, effluent treatment, waste management etc. Dr. Sivaramakrishna Pillai, an expert in this area, will give a talk on such applications of probiotics.

The talk will be suitable for all entities that are actively dealing with such technologies (such as Praj) or might benefit from their applications to industrial and municipal waste management. As a result, institutions such as MCCIA and Pune Municipal Corporation might benefit from this talk. If you agree, please canvass it within your or affiliated organizations.

This broad-ranging talk should be interesting also for concerned citizenry (such as ecological society) and the scientific/technological elites (such as NCL), as well as, educational and research institutes.

As always, the talk is free but the seating is limited to first 60 people. There is no RSVP and the seating will be on a ‘first at the door gets the first chair’ basis 🙂

Microsoft community TechDay – July 3

What: Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group‘s Community Tech Day
When: Saturday, 3 July, 9:00am-4:00pm
Where: MCCIA Trade Tower, 403-A, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here

PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.
PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.

Community TechDays are day-long event for those interested in Microsoft Technologies. The agenda for this one is:

9:00am – 9:30am Registration

9.30am – 9.45am Tea Break

09.45am – 10.00am Keynote

10:00am – 11:00am What’s new in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP 1 – Aviraj Ajgekar

11.00am – 12.00pm Setting Up Remote Access Service on Windows Server 2008 R2 for VPN – Dev Chaudhari

12.00pm – 01.00pm Lunch

01.00pm – 02.00pm Introduction to Forefront Identity Manager 2010 – Mayur Deshpande

02.00pm – 03.00pm Deploying application using Application Virtualization (App-V) – Ninad Doshi

03:00pm – 04:00pm Tea Break & Networking

Mentor India internship for tech students: entrance exam on 4th July

For the last few years, Pune startup KQ Infotech has been running Mentor India, an year-long, free, internship program for technology students, aimed at giving students a very strong base in systems programming, web development, or web design and animation.

The next batch of Mentor India is starting in July, and the entrance exam is on 4th July. Interested students may register here

Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

From Mentor India’s webpage:

Mentor India is a fusion of the cultural heritage of the ancient Gurukul system with modern methods of teaching and learning. This unique concept emphasizes experiential learning by the Shishya with the Guru skillfully facilitating it. Thus, students of this program would be paying from the day one but in the form of their contribution on live projects.

Being a Software Development & Consulting firm Knowledge Quest Infotech has a strong background of technology, thus enabling students in cultivating their technical roots.

Here are highlights of the program from the KQ InfoTech website:

  1. Mentor India Program ensures that the students learn and earn with upcoming technology
  2. Students don’t need to pay any fees and their training is paid by work on live projects
  3. Students can start earning within 6 months of their program based on performance
  4. Exposure to live projects along one year work experience
  5. Placement opportunity with KQ Infotech and other technology companies
  6. Course completion certification

Any student with one of these degrees is eligible: MCA,MSc CS/IT/Tech,MCM,BE/BTech. Candidates will be selected on the basis of a written technical and aptitude written test, followed by a technical and personal interview.

Syllabus for technical test contains

  • C Programming Language
  • Data Structure and Algorithms
  • Operating systems
  • Quantitative & Analytical Reasoning

Apply here

How to choose an Engineering college & branch after 12th

This article, which has advice for students who plan to do a degree in Engineering, has been posted here on PuneTech, partially in response to some of the comments we’re getting for this PuneTech article, and also partially because I’m sure most PuneTech readers get asked this question by relatives and friends, and I’m hoping that at least some of the advice here will be helpful

If you’ve just finished your 12th standard, and are interested in getting an Engineering degree, which college, and which branch of Engineering to choose can seem like the most difficult, and at the same time, the most important decision of your life. People have been asking me this question for almost 20 years now, and based on my varied experience, here is the advice that I give to prospective engineers.

I can distill my advice down to this sentence:

Get into the best college (in a good city) that you can – whatever the branch.

I’ll explain in a little more detail.

Branch is not all that important

That’s right. Most students and parents seem to be very focused on getting in to the “best” branch (Computer Science, Electronics & Telecommunications, Mechanical, Chemical, Civil, etc.) Everybody wants to get into the “top” branch. Everybody wants to know which branch has the best “scope” in the future.

This is misguided. There are a number of reasons why the branch doesn’t matter all that much:

  • If you study in a good college, all branches have “scope”. There are successful businesses and well-paying jobs in all disciplines, including civil engineering, and chemical engineering. And the vast majority of computer science graduates in the country do not have decent jobs (because there are so many of them!) If you study in a bad college, a good branch is not going to help you. Also, so called “good” branches with lots of “scope” tend to be over-crowded, because everyone is entering that field. And finally, nobody really knows which branch will have the most “scope” 10 years from now. (When I did my Engineering, my friends took Computer Science in VJTI because they couldn’t get into more sought after branches like E&TC and Mechanical!)
  • Changing of field is very common amongst engineers. Just looking at my batchmates, I know metallurgical engineers who are in advertising agencies, mechanical engineers who are into banking and finance, chemical engineers working on Bollywood movies, and computer scientists in the insurance industry doing non-computer stuff. What branch you get your degree in is forgotten within 5 years of graduating.
  • What branch the student is interested in, is irrelevant. This is a big one. 12th standard students tell me, “I am more interested in Computers. I don’t like Mechanical.” Frankly, in 12th standard, you have no clue what any particular field involves. If for a field, hundreds of colleges in the country are giving engineering degrees in that field, then almost by definition, that field has interesting and cool work going on all over the world. If you find that field boring, then, the most likely explanation is that you’ve been taught that subject by a bad teacher. My guess would be this: any subject that you find very interesting was probably taught to you by a good teacher, and for every boring subject, there’s probably a bad teacher of that subject sometime in your past. A good professor in any branch can make the branch come alive for you.

I am not asking you to ignore the branch entirely. All I’m saying is that give it a little less importance than you are currently giving it.

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Madras (Chennai)
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Guwahati
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Kanpur
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Kharagpur
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Bombay
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Roorkee
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Bhubaneshwar
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Gandhinagar
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Hyderabad
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Indore
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Jodhpur
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Patna
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Rupnagar
Location of the 15 IITs in India. Source wikipedia.

College does matter

The original IITs, and BITs Pilani, are clearly better than other engineering colleges. Most NITs are better than most state engineering colleges (except the top state colleges). Top state colleges (e.g. COEP, VJTI, PICT) are clearly better than the second-tier engineering colleges. And so on. (Unfortunately, I don’t really know how good or bad the new IITs are. You’ll need to make that judgement on your own.)

It’s fashionable to say the college doesn’t matter. And it is very common to trot out examples of students from terrible colleges who have succeeded in life. But that’s flawed logic. Students who succeed inspite of being in a bad college, are probably succeeding in spite of the college, not because of the college. And probably would have done even better if they had been in a better college.

Better colleges have better systems of education, better professors, and better “resume value” (which, whether you like it or not, is a factor for a long, long time.) Also, in better colleges, you have better classmates. This matters in the short term (because better classmates means more influence of friends who are interested in the right things), and the long term (better “network”).

So, here’s my (controversial) advice: if you are getting a not-so-good branch in a very good college, vs. a good branch in a not-so-good college, you should definitely choose the not-so-good branch in the very good college. I would definitely pick Metallurgical Engineering in IIT-Bombay, over Computer Science in MIT. If the colleges are sort-of-comparable, then go for the “better” branch (for whatever definition of “better”). For example, if you have Mechanical Engineering in COEP, and Computer Science in VIT, then go for VIT – because althought COEP is better than VIT, it is not all that much better.

Note: I am not saying that you’re screwed if you get into a bad college. There are enough examples to prove that good, motivated students can shine from anywhere. All I’m saying is that if you have a choice, then choose better college over better branch. If you get into a bad college, then work hard, ignore your professors, and try to get guides/mentors/projects from industry (right away, not just in the last year).

City also matters

To a large extent, success in life is not simply about academic knowledge. It is also about a whole bunch of other factors – what we call “exposure”. This involves all kinds of things – like interactions with industry, various (non-academic) activities that you indulge in in a city, seeing the various interesting and different things that people are doing in the city, opportunities of getting involved in various initiatives, and generally “smartness” (as in “The Bombay exposure has really made him smart.”)

So, doing a degree in Pune or Bombay, is, in my opinion, clearly better than doing it in a college in Amravati.

Also, please get out of your parents’ house. Stay in a hostel, or a rented flat with a bunch of your classmates, or something. That will propel you into the real world, give you some maturity, and the ability to deal with all kinds of issues that you need to deal with, when you are no longer staying under a protective cover provided by your parents. This is an important part of your education at this stage.

Engineering vs other fields of study

Frankly, I am not qualified to give advice on whether you should do Engineering or something else. If you find that you’re interested in some “alternate” career (e.g. photography, movies, music, art, design, whatever), here are some thoughts that you might find helpful:

  • Try to find out which are the top institutes in the country where you can get a degree or certificate or whatever it is that helps with learn the field that you’re interested in. Then find out what it takes to get admission to that institute and how much it costs. And then make a detailed plan as to how you could actually do it. This will significantly improve the chances that you’ll be allowed to do it, and also that you’ll succeed in your chosen career. I would love to see more and more students in India follow this path.
  • If you can’t get into one of the top institutes, maybe you should listen to your parents? It’s difficult to justify a risky career move on the basis of a mediocre education in that field.
  • I find that most students who claim to be interested in such alternate careers are too lazy to actually do the work needed to create the plan mentioned in the first bullet-point. If you’re one of those lazy bums, then you don’t really deserve to follow your so-called chosen career. Give up, and do whatever stupid engineering degree that your parents want you to do. Alternative career paths are for people who are really passionate and are willing to put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
  • If you are not really sure of what alternate career you want to pursue, but just have a vague notion that you want to do something other than Engineering, then you’re probably not ready for an alternative career yet. No point in going for a off-the-beaten-path, risky path unless you’re really passionate about something and clear about what you want. You’ll be better off with a conventional degree, until you figure out your passion.
  • Medical vs. Engineering: Again, I’m not really qualified to give advice about whether you should go for engineering or Medicine. However, note: there are many students who avoid the medical side because they hate 10th or 12th std. biology. In this case, remember that doing a medical degree is not at all like 12th std. biology. So, this alone is not a good enough reason for rejecting medicine. Try to talk to, and find out more, from some real doctors what it is like to study medicine. You should consider medicine as a career, especially if you like people more than you like machines or software programs. If you’re not good at maths or logic, engineering is not for you.

Conclusion

If you disagree with me, please leave a comment below, with supporting arguments, and we can discuss.

If you know a 12th std student who could benefit from this article (or the discussion in the comments), please mail them this link.

Some of this advice is also applicable to engineering graduates who are planning on going abroad for a Masters degree. I’m planning on writing a detailed article specifically covering that case – issues to consider when applying for a Masters in the US. I’ll write that article one of these days – so make sure you’re subscribed to PuneTech, so you don’t miss it.

Updates

(After this post was published, readers posted a number of interesting, insightful and detailed comments. You should really read all the comments on this post, but I’ve summarized some of the important points here for the lazy folks.)

  • A number of people disagree with me about whether branch matters or not. See the comments of Neeran, Dhananjay, Vikram Karve, and Rajan Chandi for more details; and also my responses to those comments. I would summarize it as: if you’re on of those well-informed students who really know what branch they find interesting, then for you, branch does matter a lot.
  • There appears to be a lot of support for the “get out of your parents house; stay in a hostel/flat” directive. Parents and students, both, please heed this advice.
  • Amit has posted a list of non-IIT, Indian colleges that he considers “good”, based on his experience of hiring people from various colleges, and seeing how they performed. (Note however, the purpose of this article is not really to produce a ranking of colleges – that is too controversial and subjective. Form your own impressions of the quality of various colleges (from whatever sources you can), and then use the advice in this article to decide how to choose between those colleges.)
  • Ajay Garg points out that if you really need all kinds of details about engineering admissions (like lists of colleges, branches, cut-off marks, etc.) then go2engineering.com is a great site

Update 2: If you’ve cleared the IIT-JEE and are wondering which IIT to join, and which branch to choose, and whether to go for an IIT or NIT, this article by Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi of IIT-Kanpur might help. He updates it every year.

Update 3: All commentors who’re asking me about whether to choose college A or college B – Sorry, I have not really bothered to keep track of rankings and quality of colleges. So, the judgement about whether a college is significantly better than another college needs to be done by you using other sources of information. Most importantly, all those asking me which has better scope/prospects ECE, or CS, or IT, or whatever else, you missed the whole point of the article, didn’t you? The branch does not matter. If you can’t decide, just pick whichever branch has a higher cutoff. Some experienced commentors have suggested that interests are important, and students who have a strong interest in a particular branch, should choose that branch. Well, if you did have a strong interest in one branch, then you wouldn’t be here asking a question about which branch to take. If which branch to take is not very clear to you, then you don’t have an interest in any branch, and just take the branch with the highest cutoff in the best college that you can get into.

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Safe Surfing, Safe Parenting: Security Awareness lecture by Rohit Srivastwa – 26 June

What: CSI Pune workshop on ‘Safe Surfing, Safe Parenting’ by Rohit Srivastwa
When: Saturday, 26th June, 3pm-6pm
Where: K.B. Joshi Hall, Cummins College of Engineering, Karve Nagar, Pune.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. Register here

Click on the logo to see all PuneTech posts about CSI Pune
Computer Society of India, Pune Chapter, is one of the oldest technology user groups that is still active. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech posts about CSI Pune

Safe Surfing, Safe Parenting

This workshop by security evangelist Rohit Srivastwa aims:

  • Create awareness among the society at large about the social threats hidden in uncontrolled access to internet
  • show how parents can inculcate safe internet habits in their children and how they can monitor for any unwanted activities by children.
  • show children as to how they should refrain from the internet sites which are tempting but not safe for their age / level of knowledge.

This event is sponsored by Symantec Corporation.

Update:
The slides used by Rohit are now available online:

Click here if you don’t see any slides above.

About the Speaker – Rohit Srivastwa

Rohit is a well known security evangelist, having an expertise in hacking, cyber crime investigation and IT infrastructure management.

He is actively involved in advising and assisting several military agencies, law enforcement personnel, media, corporate and Government bodies. He provides coaching and training to the Police department of Pune, Mauritius and Malaysia on the related subjects. He is also a visiting faculty at Asian School of Cyber Laws, Symbiosis and many other institutes.

Rohit is also the founder of ClubHack, a community to provide a platform to the security experts across the globe to come together, and to spread security awareness amongst laypeople.

Apart from ClubHack Rohit has been involved in many large scale projects in the field of IT infrastructure management & security. In his last assignment Rohit was Director Technology at Commonwealth Youth Games (2008) where he headed the technology division and delivered the complete technology of games. After that he was Director Technology and Network Operations for Commonwealth Games Delhi (2010).

Looking for a job? Try PuneStartupJobs…

Looking for a job? Try PuneStartupJobs

There’s a new jobs listing forum in town, and it contains postings of jobs that you will not find anywhere else. Check out the PuneStartupJobs mailing list (which is an initiative of the Pune Open Coffee Club).

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
POCC is an informal group of the Pune Startup ecosystem. It contains more than 2500+ people who either have their own startups, or want to start one, or provide some service (or funding) to startups. Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC. Thanks to threenovember.com for the POCC logo.

The Pune Open Coffee Club is an informal group for all those interested in the Pune startup ecosystem, and many of the startups on that group realized that the conventional avenues for job postings were either too ineffective, or too expensive for the smaller startups. To counter this problem, the PuneStartupJobs mailing list was started. In keeping with the philosophy behind the POCC, the PuneStartupJobs mailing list is also free – any POCC member can post job postings, and anybody can subscribe to receive updates.

Features of PuneStartupJobs:

  • Free. No fees for posting. No fees for subscribing
  • Anybody can subscribe
  • Focused: Only Pune Startups can post. (Some other postings (e.g. Mumbai) get through once in a while, but it’s largely local.)
  • Moderated: All posts are moderated, so no spam.
  • A weekly digest of PuneStartupJobs postings is auto-posted to the main PuneStartups mailing list. This ensures wider (but delayed) circulation to a larger group. (Thanks to Pune startup Thinking Space Technologies for implementing this functionality.)

So, if you’re someone likely to be interested in getting a job with a startup in Pune, or if you might know someone who might be interested, or simply, if you’re interested in finding out what kinds of people Pune’s startups are looking to hire, you should subscribe…

POCC Meet: Taking your startup to the next level, with Vilas Kelshikar – 19 June

What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting on Taking your startup to the next level, with Vilas Kelshikar.
When: Saturday, June 19th, 4pm-7pm
Where: TaaraGo Center, A4, Ashiayana Park, Above FabIndia, North Main Road, Koregaon Park
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
POCC is an informal group of the Pune Startup ecosystem. It contains more than 1500 people who either have their own startups, or want to start one, or provide some service (or funding) to startups. Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC

Taking your startup to the next level

Mr. Vilas Kelshikar is an IIM-Ahmedabad Alumnus with 30+ years professional experience – wherein he held progressively responsible positions in reputed companies engaged in diverse product-lines/sectors (including Education / Training, Hospitality, Real Estate Services, Trading ) in Gulf, Africa and India.

Vilas has hands-on experience in diverse functional areas including Strategy, Joint Ventures, Sourcing, Setting-up, Turn-around, Expansion, Project Finance, Feasibility Studies, Sales & Mktg, HR, etc.

He can also talk about the possibilities of Pune companies exploring business opportunities in Gulf and African countries. If people are interested, he can talk about country profiles, business practices, currencies, establishing/doing business, SWOT analysis, etc.

Vilas is Currently based out of Muscat.

Thanks to TaaraGo for hosting the event. Please visit TaaraGo.com for event updates in Pune

TechMarathi Event: Trends in Java; How to type in Marathi – 19 June

What: TechMarathi kickoff lecture, featuring technology trends with Harshad Oak, and introduction to typing in Marathi using Baraha, Quillpad, Google Transliterator, and Lipikaar
When: Saturday, 19 June, 4pm-7pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. Register here

TechMarathi is a special interest group of PuneTech and focuses on bringing the latest tech information to students and professionals in Marathi. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about TechMarathi
TechMarathi is a special interest group of PuneTech and focuses on bringing the latest tech information to students and professionals in Marathi. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about TechMarathi

Trends In Software Development For The Java Platform.

Harshad Oak is the founder of Rightrix Solutions & editor of http://IndicThreads.com and the author of 3 books and several articles on Java technology. For his contributions to technology and the community, he has been recognized as an Oracle ACE Director and a Sun Java Champion.

Harshad will talk in Marathi about what the next 5 years have in store for the Java Platform

How to type (email, blog, doc etc.) in Marathi?

Mandar Vaze has 15+ years of experience in IT industry. He is currently working as Senior Module Lead at Avaya India. Mandar will talk about how to type in Marathi using Baraha, or Quillpad, or Google Transliterate

Using Lipikaar to type in Marathi

Lipikaar is a Pune-based startup that takes a very different approach to typing in Marathi. It uses a “sms-style” typing rules, and they claim this is much easier for people who are not very comfortable with English, compared to the other styles of marathi typing.

Neha Gupta and Praman Shetye of the Lipikaar team will talk about the how and why of Lipikaar.

About TechMarathi

http://TechMarathi.com is a forum that aims to bring all information about software technology in Marathi to technology professionals who are still more comfortable with Marathi than English. The website contains articles that are translations into Marathi from sources all over the world, and also original Marathi content. TechMarathi also holds technology events where the primary language is Marathi.

TechMarathi was started by Nikhil Kadadi and Pallavi Kelkar and is a Special Interest Group of PuneTech.