All posts by Navin Kabra

POCC Meeting on 18th October

Events, ,

POCC will be meeting next on Saturday, 18th October at the SICSR, 7th floor.

Startup Speed Date will help you rapidly get to know other Pune OpenCoffee Club entrepreneurs, advisors, techies and everyone else.

For more details visit the forums,
http://tinyurl.com/49q927

Please RSVP by getting in touch with Unmesh at gmail dot com;

Startup Speed Dating, from WebYantra
http://tinyurl.com/3goaem

“…….the principle is roughly the same as the SpeedDating concept. The startup founders are seated on one side and the candidates get to say hello and have a quick conversation to talk about what the background of the founder is, why he started the company and what sort of person he is looking for, while asking questions to the candidate about the reason to join a startup and what his/her passions are and a few minutes later the same process continues with the next founder. Within an hour, you would have met/spoken to most of the startups, and by the end of the day would know whom to get in touch with for your first/next startup/job….“.

Subscribe to our always buzzing Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/punestartups/

Free web services useful to run your business

Miscellaneous, ,

This is a list of free web-services that are useful to run a business. It was generated by members of the Pune OpenCoffe Club on their mailing list. The list was compiled by Freeman Murray, and uploaded to the PuneTech wiki. Please add to the list based on your own experiences. Since this is a wiki page, anybody should be able to modify it. Click on the “Edit” button to add.

[edit]Business Planning and Board Management

[edit]Project / Task Management

[edit]Web Conferenceing / Screensharing

[edit]Bug Tracking / Issue Mgmt

[edit]BackUps

[edit]Hosted Version Control

[edit]Mailing List Management

[edit]Misc.

Pune-based Harbinger wins award for learning software

News, Overviews, ,

Pune-based Harbinger group, creator of the Raptivity e-learning software, has just won an award from the “Chief Learning Officer” magazine for “Clinical Challenge,” an innovative online learning program that it created with Philips Healthcare, designed to pioneer the use of gaming in healthcare education. This program tries to combine entertainment with challenge to test knowledge on complex clinical subjects. 

From the press release:

As can be seen on the Philips Learning Center web site www.theonlinelearningcenter.com, complex subjects such as anatomy, physiology, pathology and imaging specific challenges have been made engaging and interesting using a variety of game formats including popular TV game shows, common board games, challenging brainteasers, immersive simulation games and so forth. The tools have also provided a means to present advanced clinical images in a format that allows for exploration via drag and drop, hot spots and auto-solve techniques. 

Use of games for learning appears to be one of the areas that Raptivity is focusing on, earlier having partnered with a US non-profit organization, the Entomological Foundation, to design an develop games based online learning software products targeted towards 3rd and 4th grade children in the US. The games teach the children about “the exciting world of insects and their role in our environment.”

The main features of Raptivity:

  • Leverage Raptivity library of pre-built interactions based on best practices in instructional design.
  • Completely customize each interaction.
  • Create a single Flash File for your eLearning interactivity.
  • Successfully track completion status, score and responses for each interactivity.
  • Packages that allow easy creation of 3D content, learning games, converting videos to interactive videos, and simulations

Harbinger are also the creators of Flockpod, a web-service that allows web publishers to create a space on their webpage where users can interact with each other right on-the-spot, without leaving the page.

Basic course on Linux by PLUG – Oct 6

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What: A basic course on Linux conducted by Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG)

When: Monday, 6th October. 4pm to 6pm. 

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details
This is a very basic GNU/Linux course. The aim is to provide some hands on experience to the user so as to make him aware of all the different features and flavors of a GNU/Linux OS. At the end of the course, a user should be able to connect to and browse the internet, send receive mails, create rich text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, administer personal system etc. all using a GNU/Linux system and various free software available on the net.

Check out the detailed syllabus for this course.

Pune Linux Users Group Meeting – Oct 4

Events, , ,

What: Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) monthly meeting

When: Saturday, 4th October. 4pm to 6pm. 

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details
The PLUG meeting is open to all, there are no charges or pre-requisites to attend the meeting. If you are intrested in FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) you are welcome to the meeting. If you want to give a talk or a demo, you are welcome.

This meeting happens on the first Saturday of every month, at the same place and time. Usually, a PuneJava talk organized by IndicThreads also happens immediately after the PLUG meeting, but apparently not happening this month. 

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM) is organizing a two day seminar on Telecom Management at their beautiful campus at Lavale village. Details of this meeting, and all other interesting tech events in Pune can be found at the PuneTech calendar.

Pune SharePoint Day – 2nd October

Events, , , , ,

Rizmos Solutions in conjunction with the Pune User Group (which really, really needs to rename itself as the Pune Microsoft Technologies User Group) is hosting a half-day seminar about Microsoft Sharepoint. Both speakers are from Rizmos (technically, eTek which is Rizmos’ parent company), which provides consulting and services in this space. Hopefully, they will talk more about SharePoint and less about their services. 

If you don’t know what SharePoint is, now is a good time to find out:
In computing, the Microsoft SharePoint product sold by Microsoft includes browser-based collaboration and document-management platform. It can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications like wikis and blogs from a browser. 
It is an important “enterprise 2.0” technology that you should know about.
Details:
Thursday October 2, 2008 from 9:30am – 2:00pm
MCCIA Hall in ICC Convention Center  

ICC Convention Center, Senapati Bapat Marg
Pune, Maharashtra
Category: Education
Website: http://www.puneusergroup.org/websites/puneusergroup/events/s…
09:30 am Reporting
10:00 am Welcome
10.15 am Key note (Mr. Robert Bye)
10.45 am Tea Break
11.00 am Opportunities in sharepoint (Mr.Ameet Phadnis)
01.00 pm Lunch  

For more info about the speakers, see here.

This event is free for all. Register here.

As usual, see the PuneTech calendar for the latest and greatest tech events in Pune. And if you like PuneTech, please email your friends about it.

Help plan a JoomlaCamp or OpenSocialCamp in Pune

Events, , , , , , ,

After the amazing success of PHPCamp in Pune last week, and also noticing the amount of attention received by OpenSocial on the one hand, and PHP based CMSs (like Drupal, Joomla) on the other, some of the organizers of PHPCamp, and others, are thinking of having more specific barcamps in Pune on those two topics. The kickoff meeting to plan and organize those events is happening this Saturday, at the Level 9 Cafe, at ICC towers on S.B. Road. 

If you want motivation on why you should get involved in organizing events like this, check out Amit’s post on the 10 things he got out of organizing PHPCamp. Even if you miss the meeting, you can join late and follow the discussion over at the PHPCamp mailing list the OpenSocial Developer Garage mailing list.

Rohan Dighe, one of the primary organizers of this meeting, left the following comment, which gives much more detail on what this meeting is about. I am reproducing the comment here:

 

After PHPCamp, a few of us have been planning on an event specifically focused on Content Management Systems (CMS Camp) and also an event focused on Opensocial (building apps for orkut/myspace/hi5, etc).

Below are the details of ODG:-

The Opensocial Event is named “Opensocial Developer Garage”

We at Social Web Factory have been planning long to host an event like this specifically focused on social web apps and current web2.0 trends and looks like our dreams are coming true.

So, Opensocial Developer Garage’08 – Pune has a tentative date of (20th December’08, it’s a saturday!)

Now, the idea of the event is to unite all the social web apps developers from all over the country and just share/code/have fun and maybe inspire a few wannabee..

The idea is not to duplicate PHPCamp (get 750+ people) but to focus on the genuine/interested crowd, opensocial enthusiasts or app developers. I really have no estimate now of how many people would come or how everything would fall in place but i just have a feeling that this can be done.

The event is a free event but is an invitation only event, we will call for speakers as well as delegates as soon as our website is up.

My plan is to invite people from Google/MySpace/BigAdda/20 other social networking website owners and their developers. We really need people to have the “WoW!!” feeling when they are at the event.

Venue/Sponsors are yet to be decided. I am preparing an email which we will send to multiple groups including expert opensocial developers across the country and big SNS groups.

I guess that all i have for now:
The kickoff meeting to plan and organize those events is happening this
Saturday (tomorow) , at the Level 9 Cafe, at ICC towers on S.B. Road.

Agenda for the meet would be
1) To finalize goals for both the camps
2) un-conference/ conference
3) Budgets
4) Organizers/ Volunteers
5) Strategy/Game Plan
6) Resource Allocations
7) Venue.

I am setting up the website DeveloperGarage.in and should be up soon.

Google Groups have been setup.

All the discussions regarding Opensocial Developer Garage will happen here.

Join Up.

Homepage:
http://groups.google.com/group/developergarage

Group email: developergarage@googlegroups.com

OpenSocial Developer Garage now has a profile on the PuneTech wiki.

Liveblogging CSI Pune’s Entrepreneurship Seminar

Events, Live Blogging, , , ,

I’m at CSI Pune‘s Entrepreneurship Seminar. Please forgive the haphazardness and lack of flow/organization. I’m liveblogging. Hopefully, better structured articles will emerge after a few days.

Arrived late and missed Anand Deshpande’s Keynote address.

What do VCs look for

Manik Arora, Founder and Managing Director of IDG Ventures India is talking about how to approach a VC. How they decide who to fund.

How to contact a VC.
Don’t call or send email without any introduction. VCs like to hear about you from someone they trust. A customer, ideally. Or a known successful entrepreneur, seed investor, etc. Otherwise they have no idea how seriously to take you.

Also, ideally, a VC who is going to invest a huge amount of money in you, likes to feel that he knows you. So, he would be much more comfortable investing if he’s known you for an year or two. Which means that you should meet and interact with VCs even if you are not looking for funding. You don’t want funding right now, but an year from now, when you are looking, and if you’ve been “hanging out” with that VC for a while, he will feel much more comfortable.

The Business Plan
Is important. It’s main purpose is to ensure that VC wants to meet you. Should contain the:

  • Elevator pitch
  • Vision and Mission statement
  • Market and Industry Environment – Size, Segment, Growth, Issues/Trends
  • Value Proposition, Key Products/Services and Sustainable Differentiation
  • Competition strengths and weaknesses and Entry Barriers
    • Most Indian Business Plans don’t have this.
    • If this section is done really well, VC gets quickly interested.
    • Shows that you are a sophisticated business person, as opposed to a techie.
  • Business Model and Sales/Marketing Strategy
    • What is the revenue driver, and what is the cost drivers
  • Market Traction Achieved so far
    • This is hard for early stage investors
    • So you probably don’t have much, but important to show speed with which you got there
  • Management Team Bios/Details
  • Organization Structure
  • Financials – Historical Actuals, Forecasts; Cash Flow + P&L
  • Exit Options – Names, Comparables, Price Paid, Multiples
  • Capital Required – How much, for what, over what timeframe
  • Risks and Gaps – What could go wrong, what don’t you have

Details available at http://idgvcindia.com

Do you need experience? Yes.
Start in a large company, so you know what business is about, what process is about, and also what are weaknesses of a big business, that you can exploit.

The Pitch/First Meeting: “Credibility”

Preparation before the meeting

  • Show up a little early. (You’ll be surprised at how many people come late.)
  • Dress appropriately. 
  • Have practiced your pitch a couple of times. 
  • Have a presentation ready / bring a couple of print-outs

During the meeting

  • Don’t try to only make your points – listen to them too
  • Answer questions directly
  • Ask the VC questions – gauge the VCs knowledge and style. It is fine to decide that you don’t like the VC and would not want to work with him
  • Discuss the deal briefly, don’t worry about valuation/dilution just yet
  • Towards the end, ask the VC the process going forward 
  • Towards the end, ask the VC how he can add value
  • Leave with next-steps clear and follow-up if you think this is a VC you want to take money from

Panel Discussion

Moderator is Madhukar Bhatia of nFactorial Software. Panelists are Manik Arora of IDG Ventures (whose talk forms the top half of this article), Yoshima Somvanshi of NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network), Sandeep Kumar, MD of Product Dossier, Vishwas Mahajan, CEO of CompuLink, Ajay Phatak, MD of Jopasana, Rajeevlochan Phadke (CEO of Image Point Technologies, a very interesting company that I hope to write about in a separate post). 

What environment is needed for successful startups?

Manik: A risk-taking society is a must. A person must be willing to take a risk. His in-laws must be OK with this decision. People must be willing to fund him – angel, seed, VC. Another problem with startups in India is that biggest market, US is too far away. Having a large domestic market is key – and that is slowly growing. CIOs in India are now willing to buy locally. Must have large feeder companies, where people can be part of growth and experience it, and learn from it, and find co-founders at. 

Ajay: In the “risk taking society” an important ingredient is also risk taking customers.

Sandeep: Customers are not willing to trust Indian startups. Can’t be sure the company will be around after 10 years. And this isn’t just the customer’s problem, because success stories are not there.

Vishwas: Early advice he got: He had an idea, and went to someone for funding. Was told: don’t come to me until you have 5 customers. That will teach you a whole bunch of things. And you will be taken more seriously. You don’t know all the real requirements and complexities until you have real customers.

What are the trends?

Manik: I don’t look at trends anymore. Look at the team. For example, everybody thinks web is hot in India now. But the last time the web was hot, about 25 to 30 companies got funded, and only 4 or 5 are still around. And now if you see, most of the top 15 websites in the world are actually platform companies. What can you do that would really be new and interesting?

Students in Startups (How to attract people to startups, and retain them)

Yoshima: NEN just had a startup jobs program. In some college in Delhi they had a placement day just for startups. 25 jobs where offered and 18 were accepted. One of the things that worked well is the fact that students did internships with startups, and got an idea that the work is interesting.

(Very cool, I think we should try something like this in Pune -navin)

Manik: I see lots of people in Wipro who work 14-15 hour days. And salary is less than what the market pays. So why do they all stick around? Apparently, the answer lies in Premji’s philosophy – whenever a guy is 60 to 70% ready for the next level in the job, he is pushed into that responsibility. They are too busy with their responsibilities to worry about leaving.

Pune’s too expensive, outsource to Nashik – Interview of Sushrut Bidwai (StartupForStartups)

In Depth, Interview, , ,

Nashik based StartupForStartups (SFS) is marketing itself as a “facility to help early stage companies with limited resources to build first cut of the product (V0.5/V1.0)”. Founder Sushrut Bidwai is a regular fixture at Pune startup events, and is trying to convince Pune-based startups to outsource work to his programmers in Nashik, promising that it will be cheaper than doing it themselves. PuneTech interviewed Sushrut to get a first-hand take on SFS’ value proposition.

Can you give an overview of StartupForStartups?
Many times people have good ideas, but dont have guts OR are shouldering family responsibilities, which does not allow them to pursue these ideas further. In some cases none of the founding team members are from tech background, so even getting a good CTO is difficult for them (salary wise as well skill wise) . StartupForStartups (SFS for short) is meant for such teams. Its better to have something ready before taking the risk of quitting (high paying) jobs. It gives you more insight into product you are building as well domain you are targeting.
What SFS does is, it provides you resources required to build that beta version which you will show to investors (if its a big product) or will launch to limited audience and see how market reacts to it. After having this beta ready and some reactions from market or investors it becomes easier to take the risk and pursue it further full time.

Why are you doing this in Nashik? I would have thought that being in Pune or Bangalore (near all the startups, who are your customers) would make more sense for you?
Problems with Pune and Banglore are operational costs and resource costs. Also Nasik will have lower attrition rates and keeping people happy is easier. With technologies pushing the boundaries, we have so many tools available which makes working in distributed teams far easier. We even can do pair programming with two people sitting 5000 miles away from each other using WebEx/dimdim/Skype. Also it provides lot of cost advantages to startups we are working with.

As a customer, one of the worries I would have with StartupForStartups, is the availability of quality talent in Nashik. How are you tackling this?
We have developed a unique training program called “Implementing Concepts” which all our engineers go through before joining any startup team. So even if a particular engineer has gone through it once for a particular project, he/she will go through it again using the technologies which are going to be used in new project. This kind of a very elaborate HelloWorld for a project. Also, my experience in working on tech products is 80% of work is trivial and 20% is core work which is complex. So even if a startup is working on a product which is complex, they can take help of our resource in rest of 80% work. Though this does not mean we do not have expertise to take up complex work, it just means we are flexible and are okay with working as part of larger team. Also this is not outsourcing model, it is collaboration model. So you know who is working on your product and what that persons skills are and you can choose from the pool available. Also, to keep high availability of quality talent we are in process of collaborating with colleges here in Nasik. In this we will take the training program to colleges and have students go through them while working on final year projects. Please note that we do not assign interns on the projects.

Considering that most of your customers are early-stage startups who are strapped for cash, how do you plan on charging them for your services?
Charging is transparent. We send details about salaries we are paying to engineers assgined assigned to work on a particular startup and plus typically 20% operational costs. Now if you consider Nasik and typical salaries engineers expect and are more than happy with are much lesser than in Pune/Banglore. We already have the infrastructure and are building team. We are planning to build a team of 12-15 people by Dec end.

Could you give us an idea of what kind of savings I can expect compared to outsourcing to a company in Pune? (Where are the savings coming from: lower salaries, or other factors too?)
Lower costs for resources.
Lower operational costs. Just to give you indicator of savings, an Entry level GWT/J2EE programmer will draw salaries in the range of 17-22K in Pune/Banglore same programmer if he/she is from Nasik will be more than content to work on a good startup team if given around 9-10K salary. Plus you have to keep him/her happy so there is no attrition. Spend money on infrastructure like office space/ furniture/ hardware/ software / electricity / lunch facilities and many non-tangible costs like FBTs/Mediclaim facilities etc etc. you save these costs by almost 70%.

What do you see as your key competencies?

  • Experience of working in large scale product companies as well as early stage startups.
  • Top management has excellent problems solving and product designing skills.
  • Understand working on an Idea and processes involved in the same.
  • We are young, enthu, full of energy and love working on good ideas. (This is probably the most important quality.)

In the context of StartupForStartups, I’ve heard you talk about having a startup ecosystem. Can you elaborate on that?
This eco system is for people who are still in jobs and want pursue ideas. Though part of it can be used by full time entrepreneurs.

  • We are signing an MoU with a financial and legal service provider company having experienced in handling these services for startups.
  • We are creating pool of consultants (Architects, Performance engineering, Marketing/Advertising, HR, Viral Video creators etc).
  • We are collaborating with engineering colleges here in Nasik. We have designed an unique training program “Implementing Concepts” which is focused on training engineering students with latest technology and early stage product engineering.
  • We are talking to people who have the expertise of providing mentoring to early stage companies even before product is built OR evolved. Though we are in early stages of discussions with these people, but hopefully it will happen.
  • We are building a tool (looking to raise funds for this tool) which is designed around a process called Super-Agile, which I will be publishing shortly. This tool and process are targeted for early stage product development. The tool will make writing code almost a trivial thing and even non-tech background people after a little training can build the products first cut on their own.
  • Network. Not all startup founders are well connected. It takes lot of time to connect with people who can provide you help in building the startup. We can help there by connecting you with people we know, so its some starting point.
  • Knowledge-base. Startup entrepreneurs does not have time to go through lengthy tax stuff etc. Or does not have time to design their documents like Offer letters, seperation letters, NDAs. Over a period of time we will collect such documents and put them in an inventory. This inventory can be very valuable to startups.

Note that all the services mentioned above does not necessarily come with a price tag. Some are out of goodwill some are for money 🙂 . Our main problem is we are young, have the skillsets necessary to pursue an idea and make it to successful business. But we do not have the idea. So we want to work with people who do have it.

For those interested in meeting, Sushrut is in Pune today (25th September 2008) and is likely to attend the CSI Pune Seminar on Entrepreneurship. I know that there are a bunch of PuneTech readers who have an idea for a startup but haven’t made much progress yet because they haven’t been able to quit their job and take the plunge. If you are one of those, would you be willing to outsource some of this development to StartupForStartups or a similar company? Do you think this model will work? Let us know in the comments section below.

Related Links

Startups: Enter contests, make friends, win prizes

Events, , ,

There is a spate of competitions for startups and wannabe startups that are all running currently. You should consider submitting an entry (or nominating yourself) since that doesn’t take up too much time, and can in some cases, get you some good publicity / visibility. And if you actually win, then that’s even better.

SIBM’s Endeavor 2008 Business Plan Competition

SIBM is proud to present Pitch Perfect 480 contest. This event seeks to provide an opportunity for the working professionals/start ups to gather momentum through Seed Funding.

The structure of the event is:

Registration opens and Invite Business Pitch Presentations: 10th September 2008 to 5nd October 2008

Short listing of best 12 Business Pitch Presentations: 05th November 2008

8 minute (that’s 480 seconds, hence the name of the contest) presentations by the selected teams at SIBM Campus:  15th November 2008

The top 2 teams would get an opportunity to compete for funding of Rs. 50 million.

We are pleased to inform you that Venture Capitalists like SEEDFund,  NEA-IndoUS Ventures, IndiaCo Ventures Ltd. have confirmed their participation in the event.

For registration: www.sibm.edu/endeavour08 or 
Contact organizing team: pitchperfect@sibm.net

IIT-Bombay’s EUREKA! Business Plan Contest

The Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT-Bombay is organizing EUREKA! The
Biggest International Business Plan Competition in Asia.

Prizes worth USD 50,000 are to be won with finalists getting a chance
to pitch in front of Mumbai Angels.

Teams will get a chance to represent India at the Intel-UC Berkeley
Innovation Challenge. Special Category this year is cleantech. Its simple to participate,
just log on to www.eureka.ecell.in

The Tata NEN startup popularity contest

Tata and NEN announce the first ever people’s choice Awards for great young companies, the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Awards launched on Aug 27!

Be part of this action!

Who’s involved?
TATA has joined with NEN to bring you the Awards, with support from Major Partners Helion, Seedfund, Mint and Wadhwani Foundation and from the entire entrepreneurial community to make this a great success. 
>> Check out the great list of partners and their participation.

A better world for Startups

We’re hoping to get more than 500 Nominations, and reach over 5,00,000 people. With this, Hottest Startups will be the largest, most comprehensive Awards recognizing and supporting high-growth startups in India. Let’s help make the world a better place for startups!

Know a great startup? Nominate.
This is a great opportunity for us to showcase the startups in our community.
The startups should be 5 years or younger, headquartered in India, and poised 
to shape their industries. Do you know any? Did we just describe your startup? >>Please go online and nominate.

Hot or not? You decide.
In this competition, you are one of the decision makers. As soon as a Nominee goes online, the voting opens for that company. You can vote once for every single Nominee. You can vote either online or by sms.

>>Please go online, and vote: Help your favorite nominees win!


Hottest Stuff: Voter Lucky Draw
Everyone gets a chance to win at TATA NEN Hottest Startups! 
As soon as you vote, you are automatically entered into the TATA NEN Hottest Startups Voter Contests. Every week, 100 voters are randomly selected to get their fun prizes.


Contest: deadlines
Nominations and Voting open August 27. Winners are chosen through combination of Expert Reviews and voting. Voting for Phase 1 closes Nov 5, and the shortlist of 30 companies is announced Nov 6. Phase 2 begins Nov 6. The 5 Winners will be announced Dec 23.  
>> Details on contest rules.
What do the TATA NEN Hottest Startup Winners get?
Winners receive a powerful combination of tailored business development support, access to funding and incubation, and lots of great publicity, including profiles in a special supplement of Mint. Business support will be provided by Knowledge Partners, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore and the Startup Accelerator at Microsoft.

Innovations 2009

The IIT-Bombay Alumni Association of Pune has an annual event to celebrate innovation in India. This is usually quite good, although it is not restricted purely to infotech or even tech, so the focus is rather broad – which is a good thing or a bad thing depending upon your point of view. But in any case, it is an event that you should try to get into. For details see PuneTech’s previous post about Innovations 2009.

Do these help?

Question for you: do events like these help? If you have been a startup that went through an event like this, did you find it worth it? I’d like to hear from both, winners as well as those who did not. Please leave a comment  below so the rest of the community can get an idea of how much time to spend on such activities.