This post is just a reminder that you should check the PuneTech calendar on a regular basis. There are a number of events that happen in Pune every week and we try to list them all in our calendar. Basically, the PuneTech calendar is automatically populated from the common/open tech events calendar for Pune on upcoming.org. Anybody can add events there – and you’re encouraged to do that.
What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting for all those interested in doing a startup and looking for co-founders and/or ideas When: Saturday, 16th January, 10am Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map. Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here: http://punestartups.ning.com/events/startup-aspirants-mela
POCC is an informal group of the Pune Startup ecosystem. It contains more than 1500 people who either have their own startups, or want to start one, or provide some service (or funding) to startups. Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC
Startup Aspirants Mela
Sumedh Inamdar called this event with the following pitch:
I am a startup aspirant, and want to meet other people who are looking for co-founders and/or ideas. Can we all such people meet on a saturday?
Are you a domain expert who has a great business idea, and are looking for a co-founder who can handle the technology part? Are you a group of techies who are looking for a good sales+marketing person? Are you an enthusiastic youngster who would love to work on a startup idea but don’t have an idea yet, and all your existing friends want to continue their boring jobs at Infosys/Wipro?
Welcome. This event is made just for you. Just show up – no preparation required, no permission required, no registration required.
So far, about 35 people have confirmed, and another 15 have indicated that they might attend the meeting. The idea is for each hopeful to give a short pitch about themselves – their background, what sort of work/ideas/startups they’re interested in, and what kinds of co-founders they are looking for. After this is done, there will be time for mingling where people can try to find their startup soulmates.
Are you a person who thinks of Pune as a retirees paradise? In that case, start showing up at POCC meetings, including this one, to see the energy that Pune still has.
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Harish, Ramesh & Sujit, from Adobe Systems (details below), are hoping to have an interaction with the Pune Open Coffee Club on Sunday, 10th January, from 10am to 1pm, at SICSR. They want to have an interactive session of Flash Platform and help members of the Coffee Club understand the Adobe stack of technologies.
The agenda is as follows:
30 minutes talk by Ramesh on Adobe Flash Platform stack, the possibilities and the vision for the future.
1 hour of under-the-hood session by Sujit Reddy on Rapid RIA development using Adobe Flash Builder for PHP and Java developers – Sujit is a Tech Evangelist @ Adobe and a leading Flex, Java and PHP blogger / speaker.
30 minutes preview of Interaction design and User experience design innovations by Adobe using the new tools from Adobe like Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder by Harish
About the speakers
Harish(Computer Scientist & Evangelist at Adobe Systems)
Blog: http://blog.flexgeek.in/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/hsivaram
Harish’s association with Adobe Flash started in 1998 and he has been a part of its evolution to its glorious present. Immensely passionate about anything pertaining to Adobe Flash, Harish has donned multiple roles ranging from application development, quality engineering and product engineering at Macromedia / Adobe for the past 5 years.
Ramesh Srinivasaraghavan(Sr. Computer Scientist and Evangelist at Adobe Systems)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sriragam
Ramesh has worked on a variety of technologies over 17+ years. He holds an M. Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Mumbai. Ramesh has led R&D initiatives at top technology companies and has a wealth of experience working with several product and web 2.0 companies. Ramesh is immensely passionate about computational linguistics and artificial intelligence.
Sujit Reddy G(Technical Evangelist for Flash Platform at Adobe)
Blog: http://sujitreddyg.wordpress.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/sujitg
Sujit combines expertise in Flex, J2EE, and PHP, and he specializes in building enterprise applications on the Adobe Flash Platform. His blog focuses on the integration of Adobe Flex with Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES and BlazeDS. Sujit holds a bachelors degree in civil engineering and masters degree in economics from BITS, Pilani.
The Pune Open Coffee Club and Venture Center, Pune presents a talk by Samir Patel, on what are the characteristics of a startup that will ultimately become an enduring company. The talk is on Saturday, 28th November, from 10am to 12noon, at Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. Map. (To reach Venture Center, go past NCL towards Pashan, pass the cricket ground adjacent to NCL and then you’ll find NCL Innovation Park / Venture Center on the right hand side.) This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.
Elements of Sustainable Companies
Start-ups with these characteristics have the best chance of becoming enduring companies.
Clarity of Purpose
Summarize the company’s business on the back of a business card.
Large Markets
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.
Rich Customers
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.
Focus
Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.
Pain Killers
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.
Think Differently
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.
Team DNA
A company’s DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. “A” level founders attract an “A” level team.
Agility
Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.
Frugality
Focus spending on what’s critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.
Inferno
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.
About the Speaker – Samir Patel
Samir Patel founded SearchForce that helps manage search marketing campaigns in a burgeoning $6 billion yearly online advertising market with its algorithmic trading platform. At iPIN, later acquired by Valista for $50+ million, he designed the world’s first open scalable mobile payments platform. Samir also crafted the go-to-market strategy for eBay‘s apparel division, which is now a $500 million business unit and growing. He devised efficient systems for Stanford Graduate School of Business in the area of analytics, courseware management and security.
Much quoted in CNN, BusinessWeek, Reuters and Mercury News, Samir has a B.S. in Computer Science and an MBA in Brand Marketing from Cornell University. He teaches entrepreneurship and new venture creation courses at the University of California at Berkeley and at the Small Business Administration.
During his 2009 sabbatical, he walked solo for a 1000 kilometers in the wild Himalayas and along the Narmada river with two pairs of clothes and little money. He heads various projects at Manav Sadhna (http://www.manavsadhna.org) and GramShree at Gandhi Ashram at Sabarmati, Ahmedabad.
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About Venture Center
Entrepreneurship Development Center (Venture Center) – a CSIR initiative – is a not-for-profit company hosted by the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Venture Center strives to nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the Pune region in India. The Venture Center is a technology business incubator specializing in technology enterprises offering products and services exploiting scientific expertise in the areas of materials, chemicals and biological sciences & engineering.
Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC
About Pune Open Coffee Club
The Pune OpenCoffee Club was started to encourage entrepreneurs, startups, developers, startup advisors and investors from Pune to organize real-world informal meetups to chat, network and grow. Our members also include lawyers, accountants and freelancers who work with startups.
POCC is different from other organizations aimed at Entrepreneurs (like CSI Pune, SEAP, TiE Pune, NASSCOM Pune) mainly because of the informal format, and also because of the fact that it is free (i.e. there are no membership fees, and there are no entry charges on individual events). In other words, anyone could announce and arrange a networking event at the cafe round the block. Thanks to the informal approach, the group allows wacky ideas like the startup lunch initiative to be popularized.
This Saturday, 7th November, the Pune Open Coffee Club will meet to discuss an important issue facing many of Pune’s small startups. How can a small startup with limited funds sell effectively in the US market? First we’ll start with a couple of early achievers – Pune startups that launched on the world stage, with the entire world watching them: Dubzer, which launched at DEMOFall’09, and Onion.tv which launched at TechCrunch50. We will follow that up with a panel discussion on the details and mechanics and logistics and the strategy and the tactics of enterprise sales in the US – with panelists who have lots of experience in this area. Read on for details. This event is free for all to attend, and there is not registration required. So if you know someone who would benefit by this, please forward this article to them.
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4pm-4:30pm: Dubzer’s experience with DEMOFall’09 AlphaPitch – Santosh Dawara
Dubzer, a SaaS offering that allows publishers to quickly and easily create translated versions of their websites without requiring any technology development or software changes, debuted at the AlphaPitch event at DEMOFall ’09. We have covered details of this here. Santosh will talk about the whole experience, how they got in, how they prepared, the expenses, and the benefits.
4:30pm-5pm: Onion.tv’s experience with TechCrunch50 – Nilesh Diane
Onion.tv, another SaaS offering that allows publishers of video content to add tags, notes, tables-of-content, and other rich meta-data to their videos, was selected for the TechCrunch50 DemoPit. We covered the details of that here. Nilesh Diane will talk about their experience, and other Pune startups can get a feel for what they need to do to be in the same situation.
5pm-6:15pm: How to bootstrap enterprise sales in the US Panel Discussion
We have three panelists – Abhijit Athavale, Devendra Deshmukh, and Amit Paranjape – each of whom have over 10 years of experience doing enterprise sales in the US. Each panelist will speak for about 15 minutes about specific topics related to the theme (as given below), and answer questions from the audience. After that we’ll have about 30 minutes of a general Q&A where startups can ask any questions to the panelists.
Details:
Devendra Deshmukh, will talk about “How to set up a sales channel; How to increase your reach; and also talk about his early experiences in this area while setting up eZest.” Devendra is a founder and executive director of e-Zest Solutions Ltd., e-Zest Inc. & e-Zest (UK) Ltd. He is also a co-founder of Webizus Technologies, the IT (Information Technology) consulting company. He has experience of working with Indian software companies in both the operational and business development functions. For more, see his linked-in profile.
Abhijit Athavale will cover: “How to hire a Sales Rep; Why and how much time to spend in the field; The difference in sales and distribution and why it matters.” Abhijit is President and CEO of Markonix, and a high-tech marketing consultant. He has 16+ years of high-technology industry experience. Prior to Markonix, Abhijit spent over 11 years at Xilinx, Inc. in various engineering, applications and marketing roles. In his role as a marketing consultant, he has held executive management positions at Taray, Inc and Sanved DA. He has a masters degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University and a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from University of Pune. He is an accomplished speaker and author of several publications including a book. For more, see his linked-in profile.
Amit Paranjape will talk about: “The dynamics of enterprise sales (understanding your customer, his ecosystem, his business) and the kinds of problems you run into if you don’t understand all of this.” Amit has been in senior positions with enterprise product companies for over 12 years, most of it with i2 in Dallas, USA. He has extensive leadership experience across Product Management/Marketing, Strategy, Business Development, Solutions Development, Consulting and Outsourcing. For more, see his linked-in profile.
The panel discussion will be moderated by me (Navin Kabra). If you have any specific questions or areas that that you’d like the panelists to cover, please send them to navin @ punetech, or leave a comment below.
6:15-7pm: General Networking
Practise your startup pitch, bring your business cards, mingle, portray the confidence that you don’t always feel, ask the seniors for free advice, convince the juniors that working nights and evenings for your startup will be the most fun thing they’ve ever done, and feel out your peers for potential co-founders. Ask the panelists questions that you were too shy to ask in public, practise your startup pitch, set-up follow-up meetings with potential advisors, mentors, CAs, HR outsourcers, php coders, facebook app developers, potential angel investors, and people who will help you get in touch with potential angel investors. Or just talk about beer, or Pune’s new microbrewery, or ask around for new and interesting restaurants in town, practise your pitch, and find new and interesting people to be friends with. And, did I mention, practise your pitch? All of this…possible only at a Pune Open Coffee Club meeting. Be there.
Logistics:
What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting on How Pune’s startups can sell in the US enterprise market. Featuring presentations by Dubzer & Onion.tv’s recent success at DEMOFall’09 and TechCrunch50, and a panel discussion with Abhijit Athavale, Devendra Deshmukh, and Amit Paranjape When: Saturday, Nov 7th, 4pm-7pm Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map. Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.
Do you have any misconceptions? Our survey so far indicates that most people have some really major blind spots. Try the quiz below – the answers will be discussed during the meeting tomorrow and will be published on PuneTech next week.
If you don’t see a form above, then click here to view the form in a browser window.
Please fill out the form – your answers will help us get a better understanding which parts people are most unsure about, so we can tailor the presentations accordingly. The correct answers will be discussed during the presentation on Saturday, and then published on punetech.com
What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting on copyrights and patent issues that startups should be aware of. When: Saturday, Sept 19th, 4pm-7pm Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map. Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.
Talk 1: Understanding Copyrights, by Navin Kabra
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Many startup founders are unclear on the details of what exactly copyright law entails. I’ve seen a few Pune startups get into significant trouble due to their ignorance. And I’ve seen a lot of them inadvertently indulge in very risky behavior.
In this talk I’ll cover the following points:
Basic introduction to copyrights
How copyrights are different from patents and trade secrets
Fair Use: What is and what isn’t a copyright violation
Navin is a co-founder and CTO at BharatHealth.com, a startup focused on creating online software products in the healthcare industry. He is also the creator of PuneTech.com, a portal for the tech community in Pune, India. In the past he has worked for large companies, and small; he has seen a successful exit, and he has seen a dotcom failure; he has done product development, and he has done research; he has written consumer software, and he has written enterprise software; and he has been a developer, he has been an architect, and he has been a manager (but hated it). He has a PhD in Computer Sciences from the University of Wisconsin in 1999, and a B.Tech. in Computer Sciences from IIT-Bombay before that.
Talk 2: Become Patent-Smart Entrepreneur – by Hemant Chaskar
In this talk audience will receive practical knowledge on patents. Basics of patents will be covered, followed by guidelines on pursuing effective patent strategy for startups and early stage ventures.
About the speaker: Hemant Chaskar
Hemant has been in the computer and networking industry for more than a decade. His experience spans research, product design and engineering, intellectual property management, technical marketing, and standardization. He is currently Director of Technology at AirTight Networks. Hemant holds PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UIUC and is also a patent agent registered with the US Patent Office.
As a part of the new, experimental PuneTech video series, we interviewed Anand Soman, CEO of Pune-based startup Infinishare, and serial entrepreneur. Infinishare provides software for a host of internet enabled devices, including digital photoframe devices, digital displays, home internet devices. They provide a full software stack for such devices, but their core IP is in device-to-cloud, and device-to-device communications.
Before Infinishare, Anand has had two successful exits as an entrepreneur – one for a bootstrapped startup, and one for a VC funded startup. See the PuneTech report of last year’s POCC meeting “How (and Why) to bootstrap your own startup,” for some of Anand’s thoughts on this topics.
In today’s video we asked him about his company, and more importantly about what advice he has for young entrepreneurs. (We are still experimenting with our video creation process, so the sound is still bad. We will had a fix for this soon, but in the meantime, please max the volume when you view this video):
Some interesting excerpts from this interview:
Don’t develop any software until you have a customer (so you’re sure there’s a market)
Focus on paying customers from the beginning
It is very difficult to get the freemium model to work
If you have users for your product who are not paying, don’t call them customers! Get real paying customers
See the video for these and other insights.
About Anand Soman
Anand is co-founder of Infinishare technologies.
Before Infinishare, Anand founded Intigma Inc, where they wrote AI-based engines for automated classification and extraction of content. Intigma was acquired by Emptoris Inc., after which Anand headed their India centre. Before Intigma, Anand founded Testchip Technologies, developing tools and cell libraries for Testchip design. Testchip was acquired by HPL Technologies Inc.
Anand received his B.Tech from IIT Bombay, and was the recipient of the Institute Medal for Electrical Engg. He received his M.S.E.E. and Ph.D degrees from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, specializing in DSP & Communications. He worked at AT&T, Murray Hill, before founding Testchip. He has published numerous research papers in International Journals & Conferences and has several years of project execution & management experience.
How should startup co-founders divide up equity amongst themselves? How much equity to give advisors, mentors, and key initial employees? What are the rules governing equity that will affect me? What are the important issues in equity management that are typically ignored by young startups? Can a small startup give stock options to employees, and what are the gotchas in doing this?
If you’ve had any of these questions, then this meeting is for you. And if you are a startup founder and you are not facing any of these questions, then you are in deeper trouble than you thought! You definitely need to attend.
If you have similar/related questions, you can ask them on the POCC mailing list, and Jayesh will try to cover those points too in his presentation.
Abinash is a serial entrepreneur who is now on the loose in Pune. Most recently, he spent a few years building Zimbra from scratch in India, created one of the best web-2.0 teams in India, a team that build a product that was acquired by Yahoo! for US$350 million. Abinash quit Yahoo! in February 2009, and is going down the path of entrepreneurship once again. He is an advisor for Enterux, the company whose English Seekho product was one of the highlights of proto.in Pune.
In his own words, Abinash represents:
the new generation of Global Indians who spent 10 years in the US in the High Tech Industry and decided to return to India to be close to family and to be a change agent who will help young Indians understand the power of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Having decided to spend the rest of my life in India, it is also in my interest to be a change agent (not just a voice) in the new, modern, developed India.
For the last few months, he has been writing a blog focused on the startup ecosystem in India. On the blog, he promises to be “highly opinionated (fair warning) and a straight shooter who likes to base his theories on personal real world experience,” which should be very welcome insights for any entrepreneur.
Here are a few excerpts from his posts on the blog.
4. Reward Performance – Anyone that has worked in tech and has a thorough understanding of this business knows that the output of one great engineer adds more value to the company than the output of one hundred average engineers. Unlike the services industry which prides itself with the numbers of warm bodies it has on its rolls, the best tech startups pride themselves for being able to create huge value with the least number of people. We all live in a capitalist society and the laws of capitalism are designed to reward the best.
If you are not a hacker, start today. Stop wasting time on Drupal or other CMS platforms and start real programming. ASP and .NET don’t count either. Learn real programming languages like Java, C, C++, PHP, Python, Ruby. Start by contributing to open source projects to measure yourself against the best in the world. We need lots of this breed for the startup ecosystem to grow and thrive. We absolutely cannot rely on the government or our esteemed institutions like the IIT to produce hackers. Hackers are mostly self taught creative geniuses who code for pleasure.
Tech startup founders need to be people with very deep technology backgrounds as well. There is a reason our industry is called Hi-Tech. If founders lack this key ingredient, then they are going to hire duds who cannot deliver.
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