Category Archives: Events

Event Report: Transforming and Scaling Education – D.B. Phatak

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(This is a live-blog of the talk D.B. Phatak gave at Grand Finale event of the Turing100 Lecture Series titled “Rethinking Education – Transforming and Scaling the Learning Model”. Note, this is a live blog, so please excuse the fact that it is unstructured, incomplete, and might contain errors. Note: this talk is being live-cast to 30+ colleges and other institutions all over India.)

Anand Deshpande’s introduction of D.B. Phatak

  • Prof. Phatak is my Guru. I have not been his student, formally, but I know him since early 90s and I always go to him for advice before anything important.
  • He did his engineering from Indore and PhD from IIT Bombay.
  • He got the Padmashree last year
  • He is a great speaker and anytime he is going a talk, you should always attend it.

Transforming and Scaling Education – by D.B. Phatak

  • This talk will touch upon these topics: 1) Learning, 2) Education, 3) Scaling, 4) Open Sourcing of Knowledge and 5) Technology Crystal Gazing

Learning

  • We are all familiar with learning in groups. Classroom learning. Fixed time slots. Typical: 1 teacher, 50 students, 1 hour. Teacher has (hopefully) pre-prepared the lecture. The students are supposed to listen with attention, throughout the hour, but this never happens.
  • So does learning happen in a classroom? Partially. Maximal learning happens when you try to apply knowledge that you’ve acquired.
  • All the advocates of e-learning and e-everything claim that if there is access to good quality knowledge, that is enough for anyone to learn. This is false. If just access to knowledge was good enough for learning, then librarians would be the smartest people on earth.
  • Learning needs applying knowledge, failing to apply that knowledge, correcting the failures. Without these steps, learning cannot happen.
  • Can an individual learn entirely on his/her own? Eklavya. Yes, there are cases of this. But don’t forget that here is only one Eklavya, but 7 billion non-Eklavya humans who also need to learn.
  • Why do we learn? Primarily for survival. Then betterment of ones life. Two other reasons which not everybody follows: learning for the sake of learning, and learning to advance human knowledge (research).
  • Unfortunately, we seem to have separated “research” and “education”). But research shouldn’t be just the domain of PhDs writing papers. The most important things needed in research should really be included in the mindset of everyone – Meticulousness. Curiosity. Precise Articulation. Diligence. Discipline. Rigor.
  • The most important learning happens from the age of 0 to 5 (-9months to 5 if you consider Abhimanyu), before the child goes to school. Social behavior. Basic Articulation. A second language. Ethics. Humility.

Education

  • We think of education as a formal system of knowledge being imparted through training and/or research. But education is happening all the time. Every interaction with someone else is an opportunity for self-education.
  • Our existing system is broken. Too much emphasis on rote learning. Children cannot apply what they learn. Industry says that less than 25% of our engineers are employable (and apparently the number in China is even lower).
  • We as a society have concluded that getting a degree with good marks implies that your career will be successful. And also, that the manner in which the degree and marks are gained is irrelevant – so optimizations (classes, cheating, leaked papers) are widespread.
  • The teaching is syllabus driven, and the learning by students is examination driven. The teacher must stick to the syllabus because the exam papers will be checked by a different teacher based on a paper set by a third teacher.
  • Is autonomy the answer?
  • The problem is not that our existing system is broken. The problem is that our system refuses to break! It is so well-entrenched. So any solution cannot emerge from complete disruption. The change has to be incremental and needs to work with the system.

Scaling

  • A claimed advantage of India is the demographic dividend. 300 million people under the age of 19. Educating them well can lead to huge gains for us. But we spend a very small fraction of our GDP (compared to other developing countries).
  • Gross enrollment ratio – the ratio of students who actually enroll for higher education to those actually eligible for higher education – is 60-80% in developed countries. In India it was 8% about 6 years ago. It has been brought to 13-14% now. We are hoping to bring it up to 30% by 2020. Double! To achieve that, we need to double all our educational institutions in 7 years. This is a tall order.
  • Another problem: last year, our engineering colleges’ capacity was 1.45million, whereas enrollment was 1.25million. So, while capacity is growing, enrollment is not growing. Parents and students have begun to believe that getting an engineering degree might not be worth it in all cases.
  • This is the situation with engineering education. It is much worse as you go lower.
  • Think of the problems we face, and the scale of the problems. And we need to solve them at that scale. If we double all our higher educational infrastructure in 7 years, and we convince students/parents to join the new schools, we’ll just get the enrollment ratio to just 30%. And we need to get to 80%
  • Teachers need to be convinced that their main job is not to teach. The main job is enable students to learn. The student should be able to transcend the knowledge of the teacher if/where needed. Also, student should be able to learn in the best possible manner for that student. The manner will be different for different students.
  • Our current education system allows a fixed amount of time for learning, but given that different human beings learn at different rates, it results in variable amount of learning. How does our education system deal with this difference? We grade the students. And denigrate the students who get lower marks. Not just society, friends and family start looking down on the student, but the student himself loses confidence and motivation.
  • What is needed is fixed amounts of learning in variable time (as long as the time is not too long). Is it possible to do this? Maybe – the technology, for the first time in human history, might allow this. Conventional education does not admit this possibility.

Open Sourcing of Knowledge

  • One of the important reasons for creation of the copyright and patent laws was to ensure that after a fixed amount of time, the knowledge contained there is available for all of humanity. But industry is manipulating the system to increase the amount of time.
  • The open source movement, creative commons are ways to get around the problems now being caused by copyright and patent problems.
  • There is lots of knowledge available on the net for free downloads, but because they are not appropriately licensed, it is not possible to distribute this knowledge in a system like Aakash. It is quite likely that the original author would have happily consented to the knowledge being used in this way, but often it is not possible to contact the person, or other problems get in the way. So good knowledge gets lost because of lack of awareness of open sourcing of knowledge.
  • However, if there are companies who are spending money on innovation, and would like to benefit monetarily from those innovations, it is only fair to expect that they use copyrights and licenses to enforce their rights. But as far as knowledge dissemination is concerned, open sourcing the knowledge is what will benefit the most people. There needs to be a balance between these two forces.
  • To do anything sustainably – including bringing changes into education – there needs to be revenues and financial management. But, for some reason, India has conferred a moral high ground to the education sector, and there is a belief that education sector should not be making money. That is not a sustainable thought.
  • Premji Foundation has an initiative in rural Karnataka where they are using computers to enhance education. They’re not teaching computers to the students – they are using computers to improve teaching of Kannada, Maths, etc. The program is funded by the foundation, the government, and the students. (There was a proposal to make this free for the students by taking more money from the government, but they found works better if the students pay.) The foundation has used controlled studies to show that the technology results in significant improvements in education.
  • IIT-Bombay runs a course to train teachers. It reaches 10000 teachers in 250 institutions across India. They’re trained by faculty from IIT Bombay. 4 of these centers are in Pune. This initiative is extremely well received. It is a costly model because it costs Rs. 6400 per teacher for a 2-week program – but by introducing a fee for teachers (because the teachers and colleges do benefit from this program) they’re hoping to reduce the cost to run this program.
  • MOOCs (Massively Online Open Courseware) like Coursera and MIT OCW are a new entrant with a lot of promise. IIT-Bombay has just concluded an MOU with edx and should be the first Indian university to offer an MOOC in about 6 months. Some courses can easily scale up to 1 lakh students. This would ensure that quality education will reach the masses.
  • Sam Pitroda makes a point that students who earn credits via MOOCs should be permitted to transferred credits/marks in their educational instituation. i.e. a COEP student taking an IIT-Bombay MOOC should be able to get COEP credits for passing that course.
  • Currently MOOCs are free, but there needs to be a revenue model for MOOCs. IIT-Bombay believes that knowledge should be free – so all the course material should be available using an open source license, but actual interaction can be paid.
  • But, one problem of MOOC is that often students don’t complete the course, or don’t take it seriously. One big advantage of actual physical classrooms is that in spite of all the distractions, you still end up paying attention to a significant fraction of the lecture.
  • These problems with MOOCs will be solved, and MOOCs will play a very large role in scalable education in India. Via internet. On the cloud.

Technology Crystal Gazing

  • MOOCs will be big – and will become the predominant technology platform for education. (IIT-Bombay picked edX instead of Coursera and others because edX is open source.)
  • Everything will be on the cloud
  • Bandwidth requirements will increase significantly
  • Every educational institution should plan for 1 gbps bandwidth.

Concluding remarks

  • Government must invest much more money in education. Government should not be a benevolent dictator. Education institutions, good or bad, need to get autonomy. Why do we have bad institutions who are simply degree factories? Because industry and society tremendously value degrees and marks. As soon as industry discovers that it can quickly and accurately evaluate students/job-seekers on the basis of their actual capabilities (as opposed to their marks and degrees), universities’ arrogance will disappear, and education will become much better.
  • The same technology which allows us to teach lakhs of students simultaneously and scalably, will also allow companies to assess and evaluate lakhs of students quickly and accurately.
  • Education does not end when you graduate from an educational institution. Education continues forever. Students and professionals need to understand this, and companies need to start focusing on this aspect.
  • Parents need to re-think their priorities. Forcing your child to prepare for JEE for 2 years is causing them to lose two years of their life that they could be using for actual education. And they’re learning to cheat – attending classes and skipping college, but getting “full attendance” at college anyway is being encouraged by parents.
  • It is well established that the best education of a child happens in his/her own mother tongue. Yet, most parents opt for English education. This is acceptable for parents who converse with the children in English on a regular basis. But this is a tiny fraction.
  • Students: enjoy education. Enjoy solving problems. Enjoy life. Dream big. But work hard.
  • There are 300 million Indians younger than 19, younger than the people in this room – and they’re waiting for us to do something for them. Independent of whatever else you are doing in your profession, you must think of making some contribution to making life more meaningful in terms of better learning and better education for those 300 million.

Turing100 Lecture: Rethinking Education by D.B. Phatak – 29 June

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As a grand finale for the Turing100 Lecture Series that was held all year at Persistent, this time, there is a talk on “Re-thinking Education – Transforming and Scaling the Learning Model” by Padmashree Prof. D.B. Phatak of IIT-Bombay.

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 year, the Turing 100 @ Persistent lecture series will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth by having a monthly lecture series. Each lecture will be presented by an eminent personality from the computer science / technology community in India, and will cover the work done by one Turing award winner.

The lecture series 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. Full 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.

Fees and Registration

This is a free event. Anyone can attend.

The event will be at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, SB Road, from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday 29 June. This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here

Founders of @firstcryindia @dhingana @sokrati to talk at @SAIFPartners Ignition Event

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SAIF Ignition is a startup event by Venture Capital firm Saif Partners. The event is divided into two sessions:

Session 1 will have some startups sharing their learnings on go-to-market strategies on sales and customer acquisition. In addition, we will have Supam Maheshwari from FirstCry, Swapnil Shinde from Dhingana and Ashish Mehta from Sokrati share their learnings on how they scaled their ventures.

Session 2 – Startups pitch to the SAIF Team: Startups who would like to pitch to the SAIF team may send their pitches to saifignition@saifpartners.com.

Saif will shortlist 7-8 pitches. Please try to answer the following questions in your pitch

  • Market you are going after and the problem/pain point that exists currently
  • Explain the product and how it is solving the problem
  • Team behind the startup
  • Initial traction, if any
  • Funding requirement

You can look at a sample presentation here for reference.

Following is the detailed itinerary of the event

  • 9 – 9.30 AM – Registration
  • 9.30 – 10 AM – Networking over coffee
  • 10 – 11 AM – Panel discussion with Ashish Mehta (CEO & Co-founder, Sokrati), Supam Maheshwari (CEO & Co-founder, FirstCry) and Swapnil Shinde (Co-founder, Dhingana)
  • 11 – 1.30 PM – Problem solving session with startups (3-4 startups will present on their go-to market strategy)
  • 1.30 – 2.15 PM – Lunch
  • 2.30 – 5 PM – Pitch session with SAIF Team

In case of any queries or clarifications, please feel free to reach out to rohit@saifpartners.com or call Rohit at +91.98111.09541.

Fees and Registration

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

Roundtable Meet on Building a global software product company from India

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iSPIRT is a group/forum/think-tank of software professionals in India who are focused on strengthening India’s Software Product industry. More information about iSPIRT is here.

iSPIRT is organizing a couple of events in Pune in June to help take the discussion forward. One of them is a roundtable discussion on the challenges with building a global software product company from India, on 15th June, from 1pm to 5:30pm, at Sapience office in Shivajinagar.

This roundtable will focus on companies that are selling beyond India’s borders. It will address the challenges faced with building global operations for a software product company. Topics include product management, sales, marketing, product development, infrastructure, hiring, timings and cross-border communication. While the topics can be varied, the unifying theme is challenge of cross-border operation for various functions. This roundtable is brought to you by iSPIRT. One of the initiatives of iSPIRT is to convert conversations into playbook for product entrepreneurs.

The main objective is to enable a free exchange of ideas and best practices to help attendees in running cross-border functions in their company more effectively. The roundtable will be highly interactive. Though not necessary, attendees can derive the most benefit if they are pre-prepared some notes prior to the roundtable.

A 30-min presentation by Samir Palnitkar including interactive Q&A. This presentation will summarize Samir Palnitkar’s personal experiences in setting up cross-border operations in two companies, ShopSocially and AirTight Networks.

There are only 12 companies which will get to attend this RoundTable. If you are interested, please fill this form and we will confirm your participation. More details can be found here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: Why don’t Indian VCs take risk?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: Where to get seed investment from

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

Global Windows Azure Bootcamp – 27th April

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

Agenda

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

About the Speakers

Aviraj Ajgekar

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

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

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

Kiran Khambete

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

Laxmikant Bhole

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

Mayur Tendulkar

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

Monish Darda

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

Vikram Pendse

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

Giveaways from Global Sponsors

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

Register

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

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

Persistent

Twitter

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

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

External Visitors, Featured, Money Matters, ,

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

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

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

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

This will be followed by a networking session over cocktail.

About this Event

This event is free open to all. Register here

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

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

External Visitors, Featured, Money Matters, ,

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

About the Speaker – Dev Khare

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

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

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

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

About Pune Open Coffee Club

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

About this Event

This event is free and open to all. Register here

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

Ruby Conf is coming to Pune – Call for Speakers is now Open

Events, Featured, ,

Ruby Conf, a big, 2-day technical conference of everybody interested
in the Ruby programming language is coming to Pune on 22/23 June, 2013.

The call for speakers is now open. If you have done any work in Ruby, or there is simply some technique, or library that you have used and find interesting, this is your chance to get your 15 minutes of fame amongst the Ruby community in India. This will be a big conference with international participation, so if you into Ruby, you should not miss this chance.

This will be the 4th RubyConf in India, and the second in Pune. Information about the previous ones can be found here. RubyConf India typically sees 500+ participants, and includes notable members of the local and international Ruby community.

Volunteering: If you’re interested in helping out with the conference, please join the PuneRuby mailing list.

For latest information on RubyConf, follow them on twitter.

And, submit a proposal now.

If you are a company that would like to sponsor, the call for sponsors is also open. Sponsorship can be in the form of a direct cash sponsorship, or you could do something else like after-parties, event pre-launch dinners etc.

Turing100 Lecture: Life and work of Judea Pearl – 9 Mar

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As part of the Turing100 Lecture Series this time, there is a talk on the life and work of 2011 Turing Award recipient Judea Pearl, followed by a “Turing 100” quiz that teams of professionals and students can participate in.

Judea Pearl was given the Turing award for the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning. On Saturday, 9 March, Mukund Deshpande, Head of the Business Intelligence and Analytics Competency at Persistent will talk about this work.

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 year, the Turing 100 @ Persistent lecture series will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing’s birth by having a monthly lecture series. Each lecture will be presented by an eminent personality from the computer science / technology community in India, and will cover the work done by one Turing award winner.

The lecture series 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. Full 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.

Fees and Registration

This is a free event. Anyone can attend.

The event will be at Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, SB Road, from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday 9th March. This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here