Tag Archives: POCC

POCC Event: Pune’s June Software’s Y-Combinator Experience – 4th Aug

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Tomorrow, you will get a chance to hear a Pune startup tell its story of how they got into the famous Y-Combinator program, what it was like to spend a few months in Silicon Valley, and tips for other entrepreneurs. This is the usual Pune Open Coffee Club event, at the usual place (SICSR, Model Colony), and the usual time (4pm, 1st Saturday of the month).

Paul Graham’s Y-Combinator is arguably one of the most famous startup incubators in the world, and selection into one of Y-Combinator’s batches is a guarantee of visibility and exposure all over the world (or at least in Silicon Valley and the US) for any startup.

Pune’s June Software is the only Pune company to have made it into Y-Combinator – they were part of the Summer 2012 batch of Y-Combinator.

In addition, they were also selected by ImagineK12 – a similar incubator that invests in education startups, with their TapToLearn sub-brand.

Here is more information about June Software in their own words:

We started June Software to create new and innovative products in the areas of E-Learning, Customer Relationship Management and Data Management platforms. In May of 2010 we established our first sub brand – TapToLearn.com to focus exclusively on building learning textbooks, workbooks for English and Maths for Age Groups 9 – 13. We were the pioneers of introducing touch for learning via the unique model of combining three senses for learning including sight, sound and for the first time – touch.

Our unique approach to e-learning paid off with Apple marking us as a New and Noteworthy Application and our Grammar App becoming the Number 1 Ranked App in the World in multiple countries. We were also among the top earning apps in the US App Store in June 2010.

So make it a point to come for the event:

Date: Saturday, 4th August, 4pm
Venue: 7th floor, SICSR, (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, near Om Market, Model Colony)
Fees: This event is free, and open for anyone to attend. Register here

POCC Meet: WTF is going on with SMS – Panel Discussion & Product Pitches – 7 Jan

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The next Pune Open Coffee Club meet (Sat, 7 Jan, 5pm, SICSR) will be on discussing and understanding the mess that is SMS and its impact on startups. If you’re a technologist who is working on, or plans to work on any software offering for the India market, you definitely need to understand this area. If your product has been impacted by the recent TRAI regulations, please come to share your experiences. If you are a startup that is offering SMS based services (either to your customers, or to other startups/businesses), you can actually pitch your products at this meet (see details below).

The importance of SMS for the Indian Technology Market

In the last few years, SMS was emerging as one of the most important “technologies” in the Indian tech and startup space. With 10x the number of users compared to the internet, SMS was the preferred choice for many startups and businesses to communicate with their customers. However, with the recent TRAI anti-spam regulations, things are looking very murky. Most businesses are not allowed to send SMS via gateways. But some businesses (like social networks, travel ticketing services, and financial institutions) are allowed. Others can’t send even to willing customers. But sending via international routes is allowed. And sending via individual SIM cards is allowed, but up to a maximum of 200 per day.

What is allowed? What is not allowed? What is the theory, and what are the ground realities? What is the effect on companies that had built a business with SMS as an important component, and how are they dealing with this? What to expect in the next few years?

These are the questions we hope to tackle in the next Pune Open Coffee Club Meeting, on Sat, 7 Jan, 5pm, 7th floor, SICSR, (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, near Om Market, Model Colony).

We will have a panel discussion where these issues will be discussed by people who have expertise in this area. This will be followed by short (5-minute) pitches by Pune startups that are either offering SMS based services, or are doing a business where SMS is an important part of their offering.

Please register to attend

If you are a startup who wants to pitch, please send a mail to navin@reliscore.com, or santosh@tinkeron.com

We already have a few experts lined up for the panel discussion, however, we can accomodate one or two more, so if you can suggest someone with practical experience/expertise in this area, please let us know.

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.)

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.)

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

ShopSocially focuses on retailers with new offering “SocialConnect”

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(Pune-based Startup ShopSocially, whose launch was covered on PuneTech last year has recently been in the news again for their launch of SocialConnect, a product for online retailers to easily add social shopping features to their existing e-commerce site. Suneetha talked to Samir Palnitkar and Sunil Arora of ShopSocially, and this article starts with an overview of ShopSocially (again), and then goes on to their latest offerings, and future plans.)

Buying a camera or a laptop and looking for some advice? Referrals seem to be taking over shopping decisions now more than ever, and the web is a key player in this activity. It’s this concept that ShopSocially has leveraged successfully by integrating the concepts of online shopping and facebook. Samir Palnitkar and Sunil Arora talk about how ShopSocially has come on the online social shopping map. Samir Palnitkar, an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur, is the President of ShopSocially and Sunil Arora, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur is a Founding Member who now looks after the technology aspects of the company.

Sam says it all started with a thought about harnessing social networking. Jai Rawat (CEO of ShopSocially) had spent several years in the ecommerce and online shopping space. As social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter were becoming popular, Jai realized that social recommendations via Facebook and Twitter would become a key traffic and revenue driver for e-commerce. These thoughts were the foundation behind ShopSocially. In the offline space, we tend to consult friends before making a buying decision. Why not do the same in the online space? That led to the idea behind ShopSocially set up in 2009.

You just need to register a free account with ShopSocially and shoot your shopping questions or declare your impressions on the platform. Why waste countless hours researching stuff and reading anonymous reviews? Of course, this works best when you have lots of ShopSocially Friends. Your Facebook friends automatically become your ShopSocially Friends when they join in. You can also earn badges or become ‘Shopping Gods’ depending on the intensity and frequency of your activity.

And how does it work for a retailer?

“Retailers can integrate with ShopSocially’s social commerce platform to harness the tremendous power of social recommendations. ShopSocially helps turn every purchase into a conversation and a social endorsement driving significant ‘friend referred’ traffic back to the retailer site. Retailers can get 2% to 6.5% incremental sales by integrating with the ShopSocially platform.”

ShopSocially has evolved quite a lot its model. It started off as an end-user site. Then they realized that the ShopSocially platform was highly attractive for retailers who wanted to socially enable their websites. So they launched Social Connect, to allow retailers to easily plug in to the ShopSocially platform. SocialConnect allows the retailer to add social features into the existing e-commerce platforms. Specifically, after a customer has purchased something, they are encouraged to share this purchase with their facebook friends (i.e. recommend this item to their other friends).

In addition, ShopSocially also automatically creates a new “Shoppers” tab on the company’s facebook fan page, where website where prospective customers can check whether any of their existing facebook friends have bought anything from this merchant, and if yes, what they’ve been buying, and what the reviews are.

ShopSocially started working with retailers in a fixed fee model but soon realized that it was easier for retailers to work with a performance-based or a subscription-based model; so quickly changed their pricing to meet the needs of retailers. Samir quotes an experience here. “We were thrilled when one of our retailers saw an increase of nearly $1 million in revenues per year by integrating with the ShopSocially solution.”

By now, I was getting convinced that it was all limited to the web user, but no, ShopSocially is already seeing beyond that parameter. Samir tells me that ShopSocially is as relevant for a customer outside the web precincts. “Yes. Social recommendation is how we buy most of our products, whether online or offline. In the near future, ShopSocially plans to bring product sharing to mobile devices. That will allow shoppers to share offline purchases with friends.”

So what about India specific plans? Sunil Arora says “In the next few months, we will be rolling out our solution in India. We expect retailers to embrace ShopSocially really quickly. Currently, ShopSocially is the only company in the world that offers a comprehensive social commerce suite for retailers. There are other competitors, but no company offers a suite that integrates with the most common user touch points, order confirmation page, Facebook FAN page and order confirmation email. Check this out here http://shopsocially.com/partners

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter create a convenient way for shoppers to share their purchases with friends. Social networks have made sharing simple. While ShopSocially uses other media such as Google and Email, Facebook and Twitter play an important part in the ShopSocially strategy. Technology wise, ShopSocially has an exceptionally talented team that has built a world class platform on some of the best technologies in the world, including MongoDB, Redis, Celeryd, Python, Ajax, Javascript and others.

So what is the future map?

“ShopSocially will continue to add other social components that benefit retailers. These components will increase sharing and drive incremental traffic to retailer sites. Another dimension is integration with popular shopping carts such as Magento, Shopify and osCommerce. ShopSocially will continue to make integration simpler by offering pre-integrated plug-ins for various shopping carts. We feel that ShopSocially has the opportunity to become a global billion dollar company. We do not need a large team (maybe < 100 people), but we will continue to handpick the brightest minds to work on the exciting problems that we are solving daily.”

A brief history of the Pune Open Coffee Club (Happy Birthday!)

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(This month marks the 3rd anniversary of the creation of the POCC (Pune Open Coffee Club). A few days back, POCC membership crossed 4000. We decided to mark the occasion by writing an article about the history of PuneTech, how it got started, and the various milestones along the way. If you have any good story/anecdote about your association with PuneTech, and how it affected you, we’d love to hear about it.)

The Pune Open Coffee Club is a community of all those interested in the startup ecosystem in Pune. With 4000+ members as I write this, including founders, entrepreneurs, early employees, wannabes, investors, lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups, it is a huge and very active community. POCC usually meets on the 1st Saturday of every month in Shivajinagar and in Koregaon Park. Attendance is open to everyone and admission is free, and you can actually network and grow under the umbrella of experience and fellow-feeling.

The Pune Open Coffee Club was started by several individuals in their own ways. The Open Coffee Club movement had become fairly popular abroad before it reached its pioneers in Pune.

Harshal Vaidya was the first of the lot who attempted to get the OCC off the ground by organizing the first meet up in February 2008. The first meet up helped send out the first few sparks in the community.

The real start spark came a month later, in March 2008, Anjali Gupta and Santosh Dawara created http://punestartups.ning.com, an online social network for the POCC on ning.com. (This was later moved to http://punestartups.org the current home of the POCC.) On April 5th, they put together another POCC event, and they worked hard to invite all the movers and shakers of the start-up community in Pune to the BookEazy office terrace for tea, coffee and networking. The idea of the POCC was seeded in their mind by Vijay Anand.

Says Santosh:

“This time around, the conditions were right and the word about the Pune Open Coffee Club spread out quickly. Our first meeting was very well attended by over 75 individuals including some very well-known names in the Pune circle such as Anand Deshpande (Persistent Systems), Chetan Shah (Synygy), Jaspreet Singh (Druvaa) and more.

On June 7th, 2008, Nick Karnik an early member of the POCC (who has since moved out of Pune), created the Pune Startups mailing list.

Although the second meetup was a great success, there was a problem. Santosh called the next meeting in the Barista on Law College Road, expecting “maybe 15” people to attend. 40+ people showed, and there was a significant amount of chaos.

After this, Navin Kabra got in touch with Prof. Harshad Gune at SICSR, Model Colony, for permission to hold POCC meetings in one of their classsrooms. The first POCC meeting at SICSR happened on 23rd August, 2008. SICSR then became the ‘regular’ place for POCC meetings. With that the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. The next few set of events was a mix of exciting talks and discussions that resonated very well the start-up community in Pune and the movement began gathering momentum.

More recently POCC is attempting to go deeper into Pune by replicating the Open Coffee Club across Pune. This initiative is seeing a lot of initial success, with the creation of POCCs in Kothrud, PCMC, Aundh, Kalyani Nagar, Tilak Road, some of which have already announced their second meetings.

Santosh, who came up with the idea, says:

“I have my fingers crossed that these will be just as successful as the original, if not more so. They are all backed by a very impressive set of individuals who want it to succeed.”

Amruta Ranade now brings out a fortnightly newsletter to cover start-ups in detail for the benefit of the community. These are posted on the Pune Startups mailing list, and on her blog on PuneStartups.org

So is it all serious and work?

No, says Santosh,

“We also have a very “fun” side to the Open Coffee Club. In the past, we have had a group paintball competition, football games, dinners and movie nights where entrepreneurs and their families can relax, mingle and enjoy. Apart from this, we intend to meet regularly every month over the weekend.” POCC has been creating POCC subgroups in each region of Pune and Santosh says the team has high hopes about the new initiative.

“Anyone who has been an entrepreneur will tell you that entrepreneurship can be very rewarding and at the same time very unforgiving. For those who have quit their jobs to become entrepreneurs, the pressure to perform is fairly intense. Moreover, there is no going back to the same skill-based boxes as entrepreneurs are expected to excel at multiple roles.

By replicating the Open Coffee Club, we hope to encourage those who have been unable to participate actively due to distance to come forward and seed their own groups just as we have done so. In good time, we are certain that each of these groups will build their own camaraderie and dynamics locally and at the same time contribute to the overall development of start-ups in Pune.”

The Open Coffee Club was always intended to be a support group of entrepreneurs who get what each other are going through and can intervene to help each other out, share ideas and motivate each other. It looks like POCC is going in the right direction since day one.

Don’t all the books that matter to mankind advise just this?

Create a Startups Forum (“Open Coffee Club”) in your locality

Featured, ,

Santosh Dawara, one of the founders of (and the primary driver behind) Pune Open Coffee Club, the very successful forum for Pune Startups, is challenging the entrepreneurs of Pune to create smaller Open Coffee Clubs for each region of the City. The idea being that Pune’s startup ecosystem is big enough that it can support independent events for Aundh/Baner, or Koregaon Park (which is already active), or Kothrud.

The Pune Open Coffee Club (and PuneTech) will support and publicize your initiative, and hopefully this will be the start of something big. This is your chance to strengthen the startups ecosystem in your area, and in the process help yourself by helping others.

Here is Santosh’s message:

The Pune Startup eco-system has taken on a new life and has been growing in leaps and bounds. Startup events have been drawing record audiences of 100+ entrepreneurs and enthusiasts every time. I believe this is a story unique to amchi Pune and credit is really due to those supporting the eco-system by attending events, making useful contributions by speaking, organizing and making monetary donations. A special word goes out to the Startup Saturday folks who are putting together great events besides the POCC.

Here’s an opportunity for all of us to jumpstart an Open Coffee Club in our own way and share in this phenomenon.

For the month of March I would like to invite you to create an Open Coffee Club in your own locality.

Why do this? Originally, the Open Coffee Club was really a small group of entrepreneurs who met up regularly at a coffee shop to network, get to know each other and help each other out. The Pune Open Coffee Club is now just too big to ever meet at a single cafe, or for one person to run. However, the need for a local support group of entrepreneurs has not gone away.

To make it easy for you to get the group started, I am offering to collect all the local OCC’s and spread the word to all the entrepreneurs on PuneStartups.org informing them about the local groups, when and where they plan to meet so that they can select the most convenient or interesting group.

If you are interested in getting an OCC up and running, all you need to do is the following:

  • Select a date + time + coffee shop in your area
  • Add the event on PuneStartups.org
  • Ensure that you have enabled RSVP’s on the event to collect the contact information of all those interested in your OCC
  • E-mail me at [sdawara at gmail dot com] with the link to the new event
  • I’ll make sure the word gets out
  • Just show up at the appointed date and time and be yourself
  • Make sure your personal profile has a clear photograph so people can recognize you!

For example,

Grubshup Cafe Open Coffee Club,

Law College Road,

co-ordinator: “Your Name”

“Date / Time”

Sounds interesting? Look forward to getting in touch with you!

I would add the following tips:

  • Use the Pune Startups mailing list to find other founders in your vicinity, and publicize your event.
  • Use the PuneTech Calendar to ensure that your event does not clash with another important event
  • In my experience, establishing a regular venue is one of the most important things you can do. That allows you and other people to schedule an event with a minimum of fuss. The venue could be a coffee shop as Santosh suggests, or it could be a meeting room in some startup or company that is generous enough to allow their premises to be used. Or you can use an old school or a college.
  • Coffee/snacks/tea etc. are not a requirement for an event. Somehow, I’ve noticed that many people feel that organizing snacks, and creating posters, and other paraphernalia is necessary for holding an event. These things add significant overhead, not to mention expenses, and don’t really add that much value to events. I’ve found that for sustaining volunteer driven forums like open coffee clubs, doing away with all these overheads is the best thing, and reduces the effort it takes to organize the event.
  • Don’t give up too early. The first few events will have only a few people attending. Keep at it, and as long as you’re having meaningful conversations at the events, you will succeed eventually.

Updates: The following POCC branches have been created so far. They’re listed below with the date of the first meeting and the person who took the initiative to start the branch.

MARCH 19th:
Aundh Open Coffee Club
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/pocc-aundh
Pimpri-Chinchwad Open Coffee Club
18 are attending
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/poccpimprichinchwad-1
MARCH 26th:
Kothrud Open Coffee Club
31 are attending
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/pocckothrud-meetup
APRIL 2nd:
Tilak Road Open Coffee Club
to RSVP and to see who is attending: http://punestartups.org/events/pocctilakroad-1
Yet to meet:
Kalyani Nagar Open Coffee Club
To join the group and fix up a meeting: http://punestartups.org/group/pocckalyaninagar
Pashan-Sus Road Open Coffee Club
To join the group and fix up a meeting: http://punestartups.org/group/poccpashansusroad

Rescheduled: POCC event “Termsheet Basics #2” moved to 12th Feb

Events, , , ,

A few hours back we published information about the Pune Open Coffee Club event Termsheet Basics #2: Negotiating with Angel Investors which was supposed to be on 5th Feb. However, a few hours later comes news that this event has been rescheduled to Saturday 12th feb; the venue has shifted to Persistent. So the final details are: Date: Sat, 12th Feb, 4pm, Place = Bhageerath, Persistent Systems, SB Road, Time = 4pm-8pm).

Please check out the updated event.