Tag Archives: entrepreneurs

PuneConnect 2011 – Event Overview and Results

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PuneConnect 2011, held on 5th November, was the event where Pune’s
top tech communities (SEAP and PuneTech) and startup communities (POCC and TiEPune) came together to organize an event to let Pune’s startups mix with Pune’s established companies.

PuneConnect Demo Hall Photo
Demo Hall at PuneConnect was overflowing with the who's who of Pune's IT and Startup community

12 Pune technology startups were chosen from about 30 applicants to showcase their products at PuneConnect 2011. The 12 companies selected were: AdMogul, ApplyEzee, BizPorto, CoTrakr, Deja VU 3D, DroidCloud, InnovizeTech, IntouchId, kPoint, ReliScore, Vaultize, and World Without Me.

Short write-ups of the 12 companies can be found here.

All 12 companies got to demo their product to the who’s who of Pune. Senior members of SEAP, and Charter members of TiE Pune were asked to vote for their favorite demos and the top 4 companies get a chance to present at the bitter “Advantage Pune” conference being organized by Zinnov in Pune, in December 2011. Separately, 4 companies were selected to be part of the “Staring Up” show on ETNow, and their pitches were recorded to be televised nationally on ETNow on 15th November.

Companies selected for Advantage Pune

These 4 companies won the top votes from Senior Members of SEAP and Charter Members of TiE Pune, and hence get a chance to get exposure at the national level at the Advantage Pune conference in December where lots of India’s larger IT companies will be present. The winners are:

  1. kPoint
  2. Vaultize
  3. InnovizeTech
  4. DroidCloud

Companies selected for Starting Up show on ETNow

PuneConnect Starting Up ETNow Photo
4 Pune companies, InnovizeTech, ReliScore, DroidCloud, AdMogul were selected to be part of the Starting Up program on ETNow

These 4 companies were selected by the selection panel consisting of Gaurav Mehra, Suhas Kelkar, Moti Thadani of SEAP in consultation with Sudhir Syal of ETNow, and they got to pitch their startup to a panel consisting of Nickhil Jakatdar, Gaurag Mehra, and Suhas Kelkar on a program recorded by ETNow to be televised nationally later.

The winners were:

  1. InnovizeTech
  2. ReliScore
  3. DroidCloud & AdMogul

In this program, InnovizeTech got the top marks from the judges and hence gets a direct entry to the final round of ETNow’s SuperAngels’ show where they get a chance to pitch for a million dollars of funding.

The Starting Up now show recorded at PuneConnect will be telecast on Tuesday, 15th November at 11pm on the ETNow channel. It will be re-broadcast 9pm on Saturday, 19th November, and 10:30am and 7:30pm on Sunday, 20th November. It should also become available on YouTube and PuneTech will post a link to the YouTube video.

Other Media Coverage

The event was very well covered by local and national media. The Financial Express, the Financial Chronical, Business Standard, and the top Marathi newspapers Sakal and Maharashtra Times all carried detailed articles about PuneConnect. Three of the articles mentioned all 12 companies, and one of the articles mentioned ReliScore and InnovizeTech.

Pune Mirror had a half page article on World Without Me as a direct result of being featured in PuneConnect 2011.

Overall, we believe PuneConnect 2011 was a huge success, and we hope to do many more such cross-organizational initiatives in the future.

(Disclaimer: Navin and Amit of PuneTech were deeply involved in the creation, conceptualization and organization of PuneConnect, and are also the founders of ReliScore one of the companies that had applied for PuneConnect, got selected in the final 12, and also got selected for the ETNow Starting Up show. Due to the potential conflict of interest, Navin and Amit did not play any part in the selection process which was done entirely by people from SEAP, TiEPune and ETNow. For similar reasons, non of members of POCC who are in the PuneConnect organizers team played any part in the selection.)

Last 2 days to nominate your startup for Unpluggd4 Pune

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Unpluggd is one of India’s top startup events, and it is coming to Pune on Nov 19th. Sunday, Nov 6th is the last date for nominating your startup to be one of the selected startups to demo at UnPluggd4.

If you have a startup, then Unpluggd is a great platform for showcasing your product. The who’s who of Indian startups will be here, and not only do you get exposure, but it also looks good on your startup’s resume (“selected for Unpluggd 201”). So nominate yourself.

Early-stage investment up to Rs. 25L available from Venture Center, Pune

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The Venture Center, a Pune-based Government of India Initiative that helps technology innovators and startups, has instituted a Rs. 1 crore seed fund that they plan on investing in early stage technology startups (or even innovators with just a science & technology idea).

Investment proposals are being accepted upto 30 November 2011.

Here are more details from the Venture Center website:

The Entrepreneurship Development Center (‘Venture Center’ ) recently received approval under the scheme “Seed Support System for Start-ups in Incubators” of the Technology Development Board, Department of Science & Technology to host a seed fund with a corpus of Rs 1 crore.

The purpose of the seed fund is to provide a technology driven startup with the much-needed early stage financial support for deserving ideas/technologies requiring up-scaling and related work.

Incubatees of Venture Center are encouraged to contact Venture Center for further information.

Quantum of financial assistance to the incubated entrepreneur

  • Minimum: Rs. 1 lakh
  • Maximum: Rs. 25 lakhs

The disbursement is normally linked to benchmarks / milestones. Broad Areas to be covered under the financial assistance include:

  • Product development
  • Testing and trials
  • Test Marketing
  • Mentoring
  • Professional consultancy to engage Professors / experts with small firms
  • Filing of Indian/International patents
  • Man power for day to day operations
  • Any other area as deemed necessary and recommended by the Management Committee.

Here is a list of make/break criteria for applicants:

  • There must be at-least one dedicated entrepreneur involved in the venture
  • There must be a formal business plan
  • The venture and the team must have high ethical & professional standards
  • The venture must have a strong technology/knowledge component
  • EHS requirements must be met
  • Key Proof-of-Concept must be demonstrated & must be reproducible
  • The venture must be registered as a private limited company, or must be in the process of registration
  • The amount of funding requested must be less than Rs 25 lakh
  • The entrepreneur(s) must be willing to share equity in the venture
  • The seed funds requested must be for activities such as product development, prototyping, scale-up, developing IP portfolio, test marketing, trials, certification, testing

Applications for the seed fund will be reviewed based on criteria such as (but not limited to):

  • Is amount of funding requested enough to reach critical milestone?
  • Does the venture have a clear, potentially significant/singular value proposition
  • How big/fast growing is the potential market?
  • Are target customers clearly identified?
  • How credible is the technology? (Is PoC credible in the opinion of subject-matter experts?)
  • Are there regulatory/certification/policy risks?
  • What are the sources of sustainable competitive advantage (eg. novelty, patentability, etc.)?
  • What is the quality of the business plan (revenue model, product roadmap, market segments, etc.)?

Typical terms for seed funding:

  • Investment mode: Equity ownership in a private limited company
  • Equity stake for seed fund: 10% – 25%
  • Investment amount: Rs 1 lakh – 25 lakh (preferably, Rs 15 lakh – Rs 20 lakh)
  • Investment to be deployed in instalments, tied to significant milestones
  • BoD representation: 1 BoD seat or 1 BoD observer, with special rights
  • Promoter/founder stakes: Vesting requirements
  • Reporting: Bi-annual presentation to seed committee + Quarterly/annual financials

Application forms can be downloaded here

Business plan templates and other details are available at the Venture Center website

For more information, please contact bdm@venturecenter.co.in

PuneConnect 2011: Showcase for 12 interesting Pune startups – 5 Nov

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PuneTech takes great pleasure in inviting everyone to PuneConnect 2011, to get to know 12 of Pune’s most interesting startups, on 5th November 2011, 12noon-2pm, at MCCIA, ICC Trade Tower, SB Road. (Register here)

PuneConnect 2011 is an event where Pune’s top tech communities (SEAP and PuneTech) and startup communities (POCC and TiEPune) have come together and chosen 12 Pune technology startups from a larger pool of applicants to showcase their product to the tech and startup communities.

The event consists of two parts – a demo room, where all the startups will first be demonstrating their products, followed later by an on-stage session where 4 of the startups will pitch their product to a PuneConnect panel. This panel pitch session will be televised to a national audience on Economic Times’ ETNow channel.

Event Details

11am-12noon: Closed Demo Session

From 11am onwards, all 12 startups will set up demos in Bajaj Gallery, 5th Floor, A Wing, MCCIA, ICC Trade Tower. This is a closed session that is open only to members of SEAP and charter members of TiE Pune; this is intended to allow intimate discussion between Pune’s tech startups, and senior members of Pune’s more established software startups. If you are not a member of SEAP or a charter member of TiE Pune, but would like to attend this session and you’re a CXO or MD of an established software company or an investor, please write to puneconnect@punetech.com with a little background about yourself to request an invitation.

12noon-12:30pm: Open Demo Session

From 12noon onwards, we’ll open the demo room (Bajaj Gallery, 5th Floor, A Wing, MCCIA, ICC Trade Tower) for everybody. The bottom of this article gives an overview of the companies that will be present.

12:30pm-2pm: PuneConnect-ETNow Session

4 selected companies will pitch their product to a distinguished panel followed by Q&A with the panelists, in a session that will be televised on Economic Times’ ETNow channel. This session will happen in the Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium (Ground Floor of the same building, A Wing, ICC Trade Tower), and is open to all subject to availability of seats (on a first-come-first-served basis).

Registration and Fees

This event is open to all after 12noon, and is free. Please register here

The Startups

The following is the list of 12 chosen startups in alphabetical order. These were selected from amongst the startups that applied to PuneConnect, by a panel of selectors from SEAP. The following selection criteria were used:

  • Is the vision of the startup clear?
  • Do they have a differentiation and is the potential market correctly identified? In other words, can they make a valid business out of it?
  • Do they have a novel idea or IP that is hard to replicate? i.e. Sustained competitive advantage.

Note: PuneTech and POCC did NOT play any part in the selection, due to potential conflicts of interest. See the bottom of this article for details.

AdMogul

The AdMogul is a social (Facebook) game built around the concept of TV commercials which rewards and encourages people to rate commercials from a pool of choices from a particular campaign. (For example, Cadbury’s recent Diwali Campaigns). When people rate commercials, they capture basic demographic details which help us generate insights which can help advertisers refine and re-target their commercials.

The AdMogul is started by Saurabh Jain (BE Computer Science from UoP) and Gaurang Sinha (BE Computer Engineering UoP) in November 2010, and the game was launched in August 2011. This is their second startup.

Link: http://intellista.com/#/what-we-do/the-admogul

ApplyEzee

ApplyEzee.com is a platform for students to apply to a large number of educational institutes across the globe via a common application form. It makes finding institutes much simpler, with easy-to-use tools that quickly let you find institutions and finally applying to them via the common application form. The Institution Eligibility Calculator that instantly tells you your chances of getting into your favorite institutions Institutions Profiles for 1,000+ institutions.

ApplyEzee has been started by Himanshu Jain and Sanjay Kumar, entrepreneurial sales and marketing strategists with over 40 years of composite experience in the domain of education & training having a record of demonstrated success in driving multi-crore sales.

Link: http://applyezee.com

BizPorto

BizPorto provides an Internet based business-to-business (B2B) marketplace where business buyers (outsourcers, wholesalers) can find and buy b2b goods from sellers (manufacturers, suppliers). Customers are both the sellers and the buyers, typically from the medium and small scale industries, who create online stores through the BizPorto website & advertise their products or needs. BizPorto has operations in 6 different cities in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

BizPorto is founded by Suresh Salunkhe, who has 10+ years of experience in MSME sector.

Link: http://bizporto.com

CoTrakr

CoTrakr is a platform that allows organizations to collect and use the collective knowledge of their employees, customers, and partners by leveraging open innovation techniques. This allows organizations to discover new ideas, business opportunities, locate subject matter experts and utilize their expertise in taking an idea from concept to cash.

CoTrakr has been founded by Abhijeet Dhamankar who has 10 years of IT experience in knowledge management and information architecture.

Link: http://cotrakr.com

Deja VU 3D

“DejaVu 3d” is an image processing service, that works with its channel partners to process and convert 2d photographs to 3d that can be viewed as print or digital content without the need of expensive electronic hardware. The resultant 3D content would not require any special screen, viewing device or glasses. DejaVu 3D will tie up with event photographers to create 3D images, promote 3D services across the country, and in general become a technology processing and marketing company with future ventures in Realtime 2D to 3D video conversion and glasses free 3D.

Deja Vu 3D is founded by Krunnal Gharre (MBA Thunderbird, BE E&TC UoP), who has 5 years of experience in operations, sales and marketing in US and India. Customers: TATA, Kirloskar, PARI, Warade Automation, Accurate Gauges, Arrow MachineTools, PCMC, Patsons, Surya, Aurora Towers, Ashtekar Jewelers, Fine Equipments. Also winner of Times of India’s Power of Ideas Program in 2010.

Link: http://www.wix.com/krunnal/dejavu3d

DroidCloud

DroidCloud allows users to try and use Android apps from any desktop web browser. Normally, applications intended for Android phones cannot be used by people who do not have an Android phone. DroidCloud gives every user a virtual Android phone in the cloud that they can use to run apps. This is useful for app developers to demo apps to clients, app publishers to show demo of apps to potential customers and users, and different teams in large organizations to collaborate on apps.

DroidCloud is founded by Aniket Awati, who has experience building many mobile apps for many different platforms and Ratnadeep Deshmane who is an avid code enthusiast who has developed complex back-ends for intelligent education service applications.

Link: http://rainingclouds.com

InnovizeTech

InnovizeTech’s Sapeince is a software product that when installed on employee PCs automatically figures out what work was done, by whome, for how long, and for what purpose. It produces reports that highlights gaps and deviations from pre-determined goals. The basic idea is to provide managers with data that can be used to drive efficiencies, detect underutilization, and compare with industry metrics. Sapeince protects privacy of individual employees by only providing aggregate data and trends for teams > 10 employees in most cases.

Innovize has been founded by Shirish Deodhar, Madhukar Bhatia, Swati Deodhar, Hemant Joshi – Each has 25+ years of technology and leadership experience in US and India. They are Serial Entrepreneurs with 2 previous successes in outsourced product development.

Link: http://innovizetech.com

IntouchId

IntouchId is a cloud and mobile based solution that allows people and businesses to securely maintain and share their contact information. Just update your contact info in one place and all your contacts’ automatically see the updates in their address books. Conversely, your address book is always up-to-date since it is being managed by the contacts themselves. The auto updating address book is always at your fingertips – visible directly in your mobile’s native phonebook. IntouchId brings these benefits to the corporates by providing an auto updating corporate directory accessible to employees and customers alike, ensuring you stay in touch with your customers, forever.

IntouchId is founded by Dr. Sarang Lakare (PhD in Computer Science from SUNY Stony Brook, USA). Previously he has worked in the areas of medical imaging analysis software and helped built the world’s first Virtual Colonoscopy device, and led the development of software for automatic cancer detection.

Link: http://www.theintouchid.com/

kPoint

kPoint is a cloud-based solution for aglie knowledge transfers based on innovative video search technology backed by 5 pending patents. It is basically a browser based software system that allows customers to create interactive videos that embed slides and other data that makes them easier to search and browse than regular videos. This can be used by enterprises to facilitate knowledge capture and collaborative learning. It can be used by product managers, team members, subject matter experts, trainers, and support.

kPoint is led by a team of 5 experienced industry veterans (including Shridhar Shukla and Sunil Gaitonde, founders of GS Lab) with repeated technology business successes, with seed investment by GS Lab, and now self-funded.

Link: http://kpoint.in

ReliScore

ReliScore.com is an interactive web portal that enables job-seekers to showcase their technology skills across various domains. Users of the portal solve problems and upload sample programs. This allows companies to search for the right candidate based on actual competencies and examples of work.

ReliScore is founded by Navin Kabra (PhD in CS, University of Wisconsin, USA, B.Tech IIT Bombay) and Amit Paranjape (MS University of Wisconson, USA, B.Tech. IIT Bombay) who each have 15+ years of software industry experience in the US and India – in large companies and in startups.

Link: http://reliscore.com

Vaultize

Vaultize is a cloud-based backup solution for enterprises. It is built ground up specifically for the cloud, with enterprise class SLAs and features, data de-duplication and encryption at source, and with clear return on investment in mind. Target customers are SMBs/SMEs/Enterprises – for files, emails, app databases on laptops, desktops and servers.

Vaultize is founded by Anand Kekre (MTech CSE IIT Bombay, BE CSE SGSITS Indore) who has 17 years of experience in large software enterprises, and 53 US Patents, and Ankur Panchbudhe (MTech CSE IIT Bombay, B.E. CSE VNIT Nagpur) who has 10 years of experience in large software enterprises, and 17 US Patents.

Link: http://vaultize.com

World Without Me

World Without Me is a website that allows people to create a digital “afterlife” so that they can store their web passwords in a vault to be bequeathed to heirs after death, send messages in the future, create an autobiography on the go by archiving and curating social networks, and create private discussions. In the future, they would be able to offer country specific estate planning tools, and mentoring and coaching for life challenges.

World without me is founded by Bhaskar Thakur, a seasoned marketer and entrepreneur with over 13 years of experience. Bhaskar was one of the first wave of Internet Marketers in India and specializes in creating strategies, solutions and platforms for the Social Web.

Link: https://www.worldwithoutme.com/

(Disclaimer: Navin and Amit of PuneTech were deeply involved in the creation, conceptualization and organization of PuneConnect, and are also the founders of ReliScore one of the companies that had applied for PuneConnect. Due to the potential conflict of interest, Navin and Amit did not play any part in the selection process which was done entirely by SEAP. For similar reasons, non of members of POCC who are in the PuneConnect organizers team played any part in the selection.)

Top Indian Startup Event Unpluggd coming to Pune

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Pluggd.in is one of the most influential sites as far as coverage of Indian startups is concerned, and their event Unpluggd is now one of the premiere startup events in the country.

Unpluggd is coming to Pune on 19th November, so everybody interested in startups should seriously consider registering (click here (ayojak) or here (doattend) to buy tickets. (Ayojak is a Pune startup, so Pune loyalty dictates that you should try that first.) There is an early bird discount until 20th October (that’s just 2 days away), so you’ll need to hurry. (Use the code PIBUDDY to get your discount.)

If you have a startup, then Unpluggd is a great platform for showcasing your product. The who’s who of Indian startups will be here, and not only do you get exposure, but it also looks good on your startup’s resume (“selected for Unpluggd 2011”). So nominate yourself. Take a look at the nomination FAQs. (And while you’re in the nominating mood, if you happen to be a B2B startup, then nominate yourself for Pune Connect 2011 also.)

If you haven’t started your startup yet, but have an idea, and would like to get it kickstarted AND featured at Unpluggd, there is a way. Unpluggd is holding a Hackathon on 4/5/6 November in Bangalore, where they will provide you with everything necessary to convert your idea into a prototype – Mentors, Domain Experts, Food, Infrastructure. Two winning entries from Hackathon will get to demo their product at Unpluggd Pune. This is also a paid event, and the registration pages are the same as those for Unpluggd (links above; use early bird discount code HACKBUDDY).

Important dates: 20th Oct – deadline for early bird discount on Unpluggd. 4/5/6 Nov, Hackathon. 6th Nov, deadline for startup nomination for Unpluggd. 19th Nov Unpluggd.

(Note: Normally, PuneTech does not promote paid events on the front page (although we do include them in the PuneTech Calendar. We make exceptions if the ticket price is nominal (e.g. the Rs. 100 that TiE Pune charges for some of its events) or if the event is important enough and the price is low (e.g. a national/international event with a price that’s not too high). Unpluggd is being plugged here since it is in the second category.)

Inviting Pune Startups to Showcase their Products at Pune Connect 2011

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The Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) and the Pune Open Coffee Club (POCC) are inviting proposals from Pune startups and small companies for Pune Connect 2011, an event to be held on November 5th in Pune. In this event, the most interesting Pune startups and small companies will be selected to showcase their products and services to the world at large, and specifically to members of SEAP (which comprises some of Pune’s top IT companies). The idea behind this event is to allow the best startups in Pune a platform where they can find customers, mentors, business partners, affiliates amongst Pune’s established companies, and successful senior entrepreneurs.

The best three start-ups from this event will be further showcased at Zinnov Consulting’s Conference in Pune on Nov 17th.

SEAP will be lining up press coverage behind both events to make sure that the start-ups get maximum mileage.

If you’re interested, and have a product that you can demo on November 5th, and if the target audience includes mature software/IT companies in Pune, please submit a deck of slides to puneconnect@punetech.com, on or before Monday, 24th October, 2011.

The slide deck should cover the following aspects of your company/product:

  • Overview
  • Explanation of the core idea/offering
  • Value prop to the customer
  • Customer case-studies/references
  • Differentiators / unique features
  • Cofounders and sr mgmt team background
  • Short term and long term Plans
  • One slide with company profile including the following information:
    • When was company started
    • When was your product launched
    • (Approx) number of employees currently
    • (Approx) number of customers using your product currently (if any)

Also, please mark the date & time of the actual event (5 November, Saturday, 10:30am-3pm) in your calendar.

POCC Event: Exploring North American Market for Indian IT SMEs – 20 Aug

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Parag Khair, an IT consultant with experience in IT offshoring who lives in Toronto is visiting Pune and will give a talk on how small and medium IT companies from India can target the North American market, at 4pm on Saturday, 20th August, at 7th floor, SICSR, (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, near Om Market, Model Colony).

Exploring the North American Market for Indian IT SMEs

Although the focus is North America, the topics discussed will be, to an extent, applicable to other regions also.

  • Current landscape and key selling points for established players
  • Constraints of scale and how to overcome them
  • What is your target customer
  • Innovative ways of reaching out
  • Today’s hot offerings for this segment
  • Gearing up for exports – inhouse checklist
  • Addendum – Macroeconomics view – will it change the game?

About the Speaker – Parag Khair

Parag has done his Engineering and MBA from Pune and since then has around 20 years of experience in various industries spanning manufacturing, stock trading, IT, etc. For the Last 10 years he has lived in North America, worked with leading Indian IT exporter (Infosys) on various assignments all over the globe including starting and growing the business in Canada. Currently, he is also into independent IT consulting with the focus on revitalizing IT function through the combination of Agile, Offshoring, PLM, Cloud and Social Media.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. No registration required

Event Report: “Building Tech Products out of India” with Naren Gupta of Nexus Ventures

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(This is a live blog of the event Nexus Venture Partners’ event “Building Global Tech Product Companies out of India” where Naren Gupta, founder of Nexus chatted with Abinash Tripathy, founder of Pune-company Infinitely Beta about the challenges faced by companies trying to build a global product. The other four partners at Nexus were also there. This is essentially a collection of observations made by the various speakers during this event.)

  • Indian companies are good with technology, but we don’t build sales and marketing organizations early. Most engineers think that if you build a great product, customers will be easy to get. This is the biggest shortcoming that needs fixing.
    • Having a sales & marketing person in the founding team is great, but not necessary. Having one of the technical co-founder play a sales/marketing role is really great. Customers tend to trust technical guys more than pure sales guys. And this is a skill that can be learned. Initially, it will be hard, as you will be turned down by a large number of people, but you’ll figure it out. We all know how to do sales & marketing – because we do a lot of that when dealing with our parents, teachers, siblings. We’ve just forgotten to apply those skills in the context of our work.
  • The large markets are in the US, so how do you build a good sales and marketing organization? The best people in the US are both expensive, and hard to find.
    • India now has customers who are willing to pay for tech products. So it is possible now to use India as a test market, and build a small sales/marketing team based on this.
    • Not all sales/marketing has to happen on the ground. You can achieve a lot with the internet and phone.
    • The market of the future is not necessarily in the US. For example, new technologies, the US is a maturing market (i.e. there are legacy products and you have to convince people to migrate) whereas less developed countries are green field markets who are more receptive to new technologies.
  • The most experienced companies in the world are not just building great products – they are building great customer experiences. And experience is everything – from how the customer first hears about your company, how your product functions and makes the customer feel, and afterwards, if there is a problem, how you handle the problem and how you treat the customer. You need to be building great experiences. Example: craigslist is the top classifieds site in the world, but has a not-so-good experience. AirBnB took one small slice of this market, built a great experience around it, and now has a billion dollar valuation. DropBox makes the experience of backup and file-sharing so smooth and unobtrusive.
  • The biggest challenge in building a company is how to build the right culture. Before hiring, Pune company InfinitelyBeta makes prospective candidates build a mini-product and then review that code. Hence their hiring process takes 2 months. But then they know exactly what kind of a programmer they are getting.
  • Pune is ahead of other Indian cities as far as people building or interested in building products. This is probably because Pune has traditionally not had that many software services companies, and it has had some large development centers of product companies (like Veritas/Symantec, nVidia), so the product DNA has thrived more in Pune.
    • Because it is ahead of others in product orientation, Pune is the Indian city that is best positioned to be able to reproduce the Silicon Valley ecosystem.
    • It already has a microbrewery (like Silicon Valley’s Gordon Biersch), so an important component of the valley culture is already here 🙂
  • Currently, top Indian tech universities (like IITs) are quite isolated from the industry. But as more and more product companies start coming out of India, there is likely to be more collaboration between universities and companies. So we should start seeing more of this in the next 5 years.
  • We are getting into an era where fast response to changing conditions is much more important than protecting your intellectual property. Thus building an agile engineering organization is more important than getting patents.
  • You can build a B2C company immediately after college, with minimal experience. But building a B2B company really requires you to have some experience in the industry.
  • Challenges of selling into the SME market in India: Selling products for the SME market is tough for the following reasons:
    • No one has really solved the problem of distribution. Creating a product that SMEs find interesting is not good enough. Creating an efficient system for selling the product to a large number of SMEs remains a challenge. Often the cost of selling a product to a customer turns out to be higher than the income from that customer. And it is sometimes easier to sell to large companies than it is to sell to SMEs (which tend to be very price and feature conscious)
    • Far too many Indian companies in this space are creating products that they think SMEs want, but in reality, SMEs are not really that interested. Finding products that SMEs really want is very tough. Few startup founders have a good understanding of the SME space.

Event Report: Dr. Ramesh Raskar of MIT Media Lab

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(This is a live blog of the talk given by Dr. Ramesh Raskar, of MIT Media Lab in Pune. Since this is a live-blog, it will not be as well structured as a regular article, and might contain more-than-normal grammatical errors.)

About EyeNetra

EyeNetra is a very small, cheap device (that costs less than Rs. 100) that can be clipped on to a regular smartphone and which can be used to detect vision problems including detecting their lens prescription, astigmatism, and even cataract. Since it is so cheap, and portable, it can be used in villages all over the world. In India alone, about 6% of the people wear glasses, but it is estimated that about 40% of them should be wearing them. That’s 200 million people in India who don’t have eye glasses that are needed.

Why is this a big deal? Blurry vision means that a child cannot learn. Blurry vision means that there are certain jobs that a day labourer cannot do. So EyeNetra can have tremendous social impact.

In EyeNetra, the software on the smartphone displays a number of dots on the screen. The clip on device has a number of tiny lenses which are placed in such a way that if you have normal vision, the light rays from all the dots will actually convert on the retina of your eye and you’ll see a single dot. If your eye has a problem, then you’ll see multiple dots. Now the UI of the software asks the user to adjust things until the dots converge and the user sees only one dot. Based on what adjustments are needed, the software will be able to figure out what are the defects in the user’s eye (in terms of spherical and cylindrical corrections)

EyeNetra needs high resolution displays, but in recent years the resolutions of phones have really gone up, from 160DPI for samsung to 300+ for the iPhone 4G. User demand is driving industry to improve the resolutions of their phone. So, every time you use your phone to see video clips and take photographs, you are forcing the industry to increase their resolutions, and will indirectly end up helping people around the world get better vision through EyeNetra.

Netra prototypes are now in dozen+ countries.

The next device in this series is EyeMotia – for detecting cataracts. It is a similar clip-on device for a smartphone which uses similar techniques to determine whether you have cataract. The basic idea is similar – the software draws various patterns on the screen which pass through a specific area of the lens in your eye before reaching the retina to form a clear green dot. If you have normal vision, you will see a simple green dot going around in circles. If you have astigmatism, you will see the green dot going around in an oval path. If you have cataract, the green dot will disappear at certain times as it goes round. This is because at a certain location, when it has to pass through a cataract affected portion of your lens, the rays will get scattered and will not form a nice green dot on the retina.

What else?

The eye is the only part of your body where you can see blood vessels directly without having to cut you up. Similarly, if you know what to look for, you can look into the aqueous humour (the colorless liquid in the eye), you can make deductions about the blood sugar levels in your body. So, the eye is an amazing device, and you can use clever visual computing to do various interesting deductions about your body using simple devices and smartphones.

EyeNetra is setting up a team in India which will work with hospitals, government organizations, NGOs and other groups to take the EyeNetra device to rural India. They tried just giving the devices away to NGOs, but that did not work well – so the current thinking is that it needs to be run like a business using a focused team for success. So, EyeNetra is looking for people who will join the team. A COO, maybe a CTO, BizDev are needed. Anyone interested should contact Ramesh.

Challenge to People – the smart phone is an amazing device. There is lots and lots you could do with it. Think of various ways in which you can use it for purposes that it was not originally intended for. There is the camera, the display, accelerometer, GPS, internet, bluetooth, RF. You can do magic.

Think of this example of thinking out of the box: create a video game in which people with normal vision will shoot one way, and people with abnormal vision (astimatism, color-blindness) will shoot a different way. So you get a medical test done while playing a video game.

For more information about EyeNetra, see http://EyeNetra.com

Why Visual Computation Will be Big

  • In the next few decades, the world will move from text and audio based communications to more and more visual information. Vision crosses language barriers, socio-economic barriers, and will help the next billion consumers. Hence, processing visual information intelligently becomes a very important capability.
  • In 6 years, the world went from zero cameras in mobile phones, to a billion cameras in mobile phones. And today, a billion mobile phones with cameras get sold every year. There is a major visual revolution underway, but most people haven’t realized it yet.
  • Hence, the Camera Culture group spends their time exploring various ideas related to visual computing. They spend 60% of their time on hardware and 40% on software. With this, they build crazy cameras – like the camera that can look around corners.
  • Looking around corners: How is this done? Use the flash from a camera. The light hits a wall/door/obstacle and bounces off in various directions. Some of the bounced photons actually go around the corner, hit various objects that are not directly visible, and then an even smaller fraction of them bounce back all the way to the camera. If you’re clever about analyzing the photons, you can actually figure out where each photon has come from and hence reconstruct features of the objects around the camera. For this you need to do an extremely fast camera – which does one trillion frames per second.

Other tips:

  • If you do the work that you’re supposed to be doing, and then spend a little more time doing ‘something extra’, that something extra has a high chance of being noticed. So everybody – do your job well, but make sure to do something extra
  • In a way, it is good to work in an emerging country like India. Here, you are not totally constrained by draconian governmental regulations that limit your creativity and possibilities. Of course, we also have regulations, but they’re not as strong, and not as strongly enforced. Hence, you can achieve much more here, and more quickly than what would be possible in the US. In fact, you can help people more because the Government is staying out of the way.
  • MIT has a $100k Entrepreneurship & Ideas competition every year. This has 3 stages. A 1-minute elevator pitch contest in October, with $1000 instant prizes, followed by a Executive Summary competition in November, with $1000 instant prizes, followed by a full-fledged Business Plan competition in Jan/Feb which has various track prizes, and a grand prize of $100k. Tip: get on their mailing list and you can get an idea of everything that’s going on. So that is something worth doing.
  • If Pune would like to start such competitions Ramesh is willing to put in some money from his Entrepreneurship class (Imaging Ventures) to fund the competition.
  • There are dozens and dozens of classes in MIT for converting innovation to commercial success. This includes basic+applied research all the way to classes targeting people in established companies. What you can do, sitting in Pune, is join the mailing lists of these classes, and see the course material on the web. For free.
  • Thinking about difference between Pune and Boston (MIT) – the same people who don’t do much here go to Boston and do amazing things. What is the difference? Network. Everybody has to go out of their way to help other people in the network – and this has a huge multiplier effect.

Talk by Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab – 6th July

External Visitors, , , ,

Mark your calendars. This is an event you cannot miss.

Ramesh Raskar, Associate Professor at MIT Media Lab (that’s Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not Pune’s MIT), considered one of the top young innovators in the world, is in town, and we’re taking this opportunity to have him give a talk. The talk is at 5:45pm on Wednesday, 6th July, at the Venture Center, in NCL, Pashan. He will talk about various topics including:

  • Netra, the mobile phone based eye exam for developing countries,
  • His other work in the field of computational vision and imaging,
  • His initiatives in India and Pune,
  • Help/Collaborations he is looking for from people organizations in India
  • MIT Media Labs, commercializing inventions, the startup ecosystem in Boston.

This will be followed by time for discussions and networking

About Ramesh Raskar

Ramesh Raskar is the head of MIT Media Lab’s Camera Culture research group. His research interests span the fields of computational photography, inverse problems in imaging, and human-computer interaction. Recent inventions include transient imaging to look around a corner, a next-generation CAT-scan machine, imperceptible markers for motion capture (Prakash), long-distance barcodes (Bokode), touch + hover 3D interaction displays (BiDi screen), low-cost eye care devices (NETRA) and new theoretical models to augment light fields (ALF) to represent wave phenomena.

Awards and Honours for Ramesh Raskar:

  • Top young innovator under 35, from MIT Technology Review in 2004
  • Top 20 Indian technology innovators, from Global Indus Technovator Awards, MIT, 2003
  • Sloan Research Fellowship, 2009
  • DARPA Young Faculty award, 2010
  • 40 US patents
  • 4 Mitsubishi Electric Invention awards

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. No registration required