Proto.in is the premiere conference for startups in India. The most recent edition was held in Bangalore last week. The next one is now being planned and the organizers are asking whether it should be in Pune or Mumbai.

Instead of making it simply a twitter popularity contest, I say let’s give them a host of compelling reasons why it must be Pune. In the comments to this post below, please suggest some good reasons why the next proto.in should be in Pune. I’ll collate the top reasons and create a new post out of them and forward it to the proto organizers.

To get you started, here are my reasons:

• Pune the undiscovered country: If you go to a typical startup event (proto, headstart) in Bangalore/Mumbai/Delhi, you’ll run into the same faces over and over again. Pune is different. There is a lot that Pune has to offer that the rest of the ecosystem is not aware of (some examples below). Now would be a good time for proto to start the process of reaching out beyond the top 3 metros.
• Pune is a hotbed of activity: Just look at the tech events calendar for Pune to get an idea of the various and varied activities. Multiple pages of them – note the Page 2, Page 3 etc at the bottom of that page.
• Participation! PHPCamp, which was organized in and by Pune, attracted over 720 people from all over India. That’s right, 720 actual participants. It was 1000+ for Microsoft’s DevCon (organizers had to actually send some people back because there was just no space at the venue) and Acad DevCon. WATBlog Wednesday got its largest participation in the Pune edition (50% more than Mumbai and Bangalore editions).
• Students: The future of the startup ecosystem is in the hands of students, and in our ability to get them interested in startups. And what better place to start that than Pune. We have boat loads of students. Who are enthusiastic and motivated. Gnunify a Free and Open Source conference organied mostly by students of Pune is expected to attract 600+ students.

These are the first few reasons that come to my mind. Please add to the list.

Update:

See the comments section for many more great reasons. A couple that I wanted to highlight right away:

• Atul points out that: Pune has very few professional VC offices. VCs visiting Pune in the context of Proto.in might find obvious funding choices that they would have otherwise missed on.
• Enthusiastic and others point out: It’s cheaper to organize it in Pune
• Santosh points out: Pune OpenCoffee Club (550+) energetic Volunteers, Startups, and Entrepreneurs
• and also: Doing it in Pune will definitely draw out techies in numbers for Startup Shotgun
• and finally: Pune weather is far better than Bombay weather

And there are more below. And more keep coming in. If you are reading this in an email or RSS feed, please visit the website to see the full list of comments. You can subscribe to PuneTech comments feed (RSS, or email) too.