Tag Archives: startups

Tech Events this Week: Robots; Scrum; Monish Darda; Cocoa; KnockoutJS; Mompreneurs

Events, , , , , ,

Here is a list of technology events happening in Pune over the next few days. To be informed of these events in advance, you should subscribe to get the PuneTech calendar event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe.

(Paid) Building Advanced Aerial Robots using Open Source Tools

  • Date: 9-10 May
  • Location: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road

See more details at: http://workshop.navstik.org/

This workshop costs anywhere from Rs. 10000 to Rs. 25000 (depending on who you are).

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

Pune Scrum Meetup: Discussion on Impact Mapping

  • Date: Fri, 9 May 5:00pm – 8:00pm
  • Location: Ramee Grand, Apte Road, near Deccan Gymkhana Pune
  • This will be our first meet up, so lets get to know each other
  • Discuss what is Impact Mapping and how it helps agile teams

About Pune Scrum Meetup

This group is for Scrum enthusiasts or Scrum practitioners who are willing to share and learn about how they Play Scrum day to day. While focus is more on Scrum, we may discuss on how to make use of other Agile methodologies with Scrum to be effective in delivering great products.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/Pune-Scrum-Meetup/events/180004682/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

My Story @TiEPune: Monish Darda, Founder Icertis

  • Date: Fri, 9 May 6:30pm – 8:00pm
  • Location: Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, Ground Floor, Wing A, ICC Trade Center, SB Road

Monish has more than 20 years of experience in application and systems software development and the architecting of enterprise distributed systems. Along with Unmesh, he co-founded Websym Technologies in 1998. He set up and headed the India R&D operation of Storability, an enterprise storage management startup from Boston. Storability was eventually acquired by Sun Microsystems after which Monish founded and led the India R&D of BladeLogic, helping build a highly scalable enterprise platform for server management in the data center. BladeLogic was acquired by BMC Software after a successful IPO, and Monish contributed to BMC’s cloud management vision, laying the foundation for some of the early pioneering work on cloud resource management and provisioning. He is also the co-inventor of two patents in this area. Monish has a BE in Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s degree from Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, USA. In his spare time, Monish is a self-proclaimed “gadget freak” and “gamer” and loves his Xbox Kinect and PS3 Move systems (he just outgrew the Wii a few months ago) and often claims that video games keep him fit! His other interests are Formula 1 and reading. He is a sci-fi aficionado and loves Isaac Asimov.

About TiE Pune My Story Sessions!

“My Story – Inspiring Journey of an Entrepreneur”

This program is created to celebrate entrepreneurship and bring stories from successful entrepreneurs in their own words. The invited speakers will share their entrepreneurial journeys and talk about lessons learned, mistakes they wish they avoided, and key decisions that helped make their venture successful.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/tie-pune-my-story-session-with-monish-darda-co-founder-and-cto-icertis-tickets-11502613627

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events.

Pune Cocoa Meetup: Experience with building 100% core data observing view controllers

  • Date: Sat, 10 May 3:00pm – 5:00pm
  • Location: Synerzip (3rd Floor, Revolution Mall, next to City Pride, Kothrud, Pune)

Event Organizer writes:

  • In last couple of months, we scraped some old code and built a small app from scratch, I decided to go with 100% core data supported, FetchResultController backed app. That way all view controller is automatically updated for any data change.

  • I would like to share some challenges I faced and overcame as well as some which still remains.

About Pune Cocoa Meetup Group

See http://www.meetup.com/Pune-Cocoa/ for more details about the Pune Cocoa meetup group.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/PuneCocoa/events/178307942/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events.

TechNext Event: Discussion on KnockoutJS

  • Date: Sat, 10 May 4:00pm – 6:00pm
  • Location: Synerzip Softech Recreational Area, 3rd Floor, Revolution Mall, Above Big Bazaar, Kothrud

Topics to be discussed

  • What is knockout js?
  • What is MVVM?
  • Why to use Knockout js ?(Along with Knockout Architecture)
  • What are observables?
  • What are computed observables?
  • What are subscribers?
  • What are knockout Bindings?

Examples to explain them all.

Speaker: Ravinder Mahajan

About Tech Next

Tech Next is a group which meets twice in a month in Pune, once for expert speakers and once for unconference at Synerzip’s recreation area. This group discuss topics pertaining to IT world from Developer centric technologies, QA centric practices and technology and Agile practitioners experiences.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.meetup.com/TechNext/events/179988662/

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

Panel Discussion: Mompreneurs in Pune

  • Date: Sat, 10 May 4:30pm – 7:00pm
  • Location: SCMLD (Sadhna Centre for Management, Learning & Development), 392-A, Mahale Plot, Deep Bunglow Chowk, Model Colony

Join us for a panel discussion with stellar Mom-Entrepreneurs and celebrate their journey. It’s a casual chat, where each mompreneur will share her story of building a startup while raising kid(s) at the same time. The speakers will share their startup story; challenges faced by them and will answer questions from attendees. The discussion will be followed by snacks and networking. The event is open for all aspiring and existing entrepreneurs who will get an opportunity to listen to challenges faced by Entrepreneurs in their startups.

Panelist:

  • Jasleen Manrao: Founder Figments Inc.
  • Dolma Balan: Founder Dial-an-Idli
  • Vaishali Sharma: Founder PurpleChai

Moderated by: Mr. Vikram Mehmi, Founder Sparkpluggers Innovation Lab

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/panel-discussion-mompreneurs-at-pune-tickets-11525018641

Please double-check the date/time/venue of the event at the above link. We try to ensure that PuneTech calendar listings are accurate, but occasional errors creep in.

About the PuneTech Calendar

Get event announcements by email. Click here to subscribe (free) to the PuneTech Calendar of events, or follow @punetech on twitter

Rdio acquires Pune’s Dhingana to Enter India Market

Miscellaneous, News, , , ,

MediaNama is reporting that international streaming music startup Rdio has acquired Dhingana in a bid to enter the India market.

This is really less of an “acquisition” and more of a “fire sale” (or an aquihire):

Sources also told MediaNama that the amount being offered to Dhingana is lower than the amount of funding they had raised. Dhingana had shut down its operations in February 2014 a couple of months after the biggest music label in India, T-Series, decided not to renew its contract with the company. In December, after reports that Dhingana might shut down, [CEO] Bhatia had told MediaNama that the company was in the process of restructuring its operations. He had at that point had declined to comment on the possibility of a shut-down.

Dhingana was backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, but had also raised funding from Helion Ventures and Inventus Capital prior to this.

The founder of Dhingana will join Rdio team:

founders Snehal Shinde and Swapnil Shinde will be joining the Rdio team, where they will be responsible for Rdio’s expansion efforts in India as well as other emerging markets. Rdio India will be launching later this year.

Rdio provides ad-supported and ad-free online music streaming services in 35 countries:

Created by Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis in 2010, it last raised funding in 2011, when it then received $17.5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners, along with earlier investors Skype, Atomico Ventures and Friis himself through some of his investment entities.

One interesting aspect of this acquisition for PuneTech readers is the technology aspect of it. There will, hopefully, soon be APIs for us:

Open for developers in India? Rdio has an API that can be used by developers to create music oriented apps. Internationally Shazam uses these APIs, but the company has a tie-up with Saavn in India for music recognition services. It’s not clear what will happen to that deal once the acquisition is completed. Gaana had also launched a similar API last month and had invited developers to submit app ideas on its website.

Read the full article

Startup Conference TiECON Pune 2014 – 12 April; with keynote by Rajiv Bajaj

Events, Featured, , ,

TiECON Pune 2014, the second TiE Pune conference aims to bring together entrepreneurs, investors and industry, foster generation and discussion of entrepreneuri
al ideas, and develop a sustainable entrepreneurial infrastructure within Pune.

TiECON Pune will be held in Westin Pune, from 9am to 6pm on 12th April. Click here to register – before tomorrow 15th March to avail of the early bird discount. (Use the coupon code TiE-PuneTech to get a discount.)

Check out the agenda for the event. Highlights: 40+ Speakers, including a Keynote by Rajiv Bajaj.

Why Attend?

At TiECon Pune 2014 chances are you’ll come face to face with business’ leaders, entrepreneurs & industry luminaries. It will be a great opportunity to hear & interact with industry experts and explore:

  • New frontiers for the entrepreneurial journey
  • New enablers and support systems
  • New markets for seeking success

Stay connected and we’ll update you as soon as registrations open.

Who Should Attend

Entrepreneurs are passion-people. This event is for these passionate individuals. You could be passionate about technology, services, mobile, consumers, internet or engineering. But if you’re passionate about the future – you should be here.

Fees and Registration

The charges for the event range from Rs. 1599 for early bird TiE Pune members, to 3000+ for non-member late birds. If you’re not a TiE Pune member, you can use the code “TiE-PuneTech” to get a discount as a “Member of Supporting Organization”. The early bird discount ends on 15 March (tomorrow).

Register here

Interview with @NexusVP, the most active tech Venture Capitalists in Pune

Featured, Interview, Money Matters, , ,

Venture Capital firm Nexus VP, with 8 investments in Pune, is not only the VC firm with the largest presence in Pune, but conversely, they also seem to love Pune, with more investments here than any other city, including everyone else’s darling Bangalore.

Recently, Sandeep Singhal wrote this in a tweet:

Pune has the most product oriented culture. With 8 investments plan to spend more time there.

and soon after that, Nexus held an event in Pune showcasing 3 of their portfolio companies. With this much invested in Pune, and more activities planned, we decided to talk to Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus to find out more about their Pune love affair.

How many companies have you invested in Pune? Can you name them?

Currently 8 of our companies have offices in Pune : Pubmatic, Druva, Sedemac, Helpshift, Uniken, and 3 others that will be announced in time

What attracts you to Pune? What would you say about the Pune start-up ecosystem, in comparison with other cities?

We consider Pune as a key technology hub in India. We find very high quality start-ups in Pune. They are either starting up in Pune or are setting up engineering offices here very early on in their life cycle to tap onto the superlative engineering talent in the city.

What are you plans for 2014-15?

We plan to continue / increase our focus in Pune, hope to interact and partner with many more exceptional entrepreneurs in Pune in coming years.

What technologies do you see as most exciting for the next few years?

We expect that exciting startup opportunities will be unearthed at the intersection of different technology trends like mobility, cloud and big data, applied to all facets of life spanning but not limited to health and wellness, education, enterprise IT, retail, home automation, industrial automation, agriculture, etc. That said, rather than being thesis driven, we are fundementally bottoms up investors looking to partner with passionate entrepreneurs who create category defining companies.

What would your top-3 recommendations (advice) be for an entrepreneur?

  • Instill the sales DNA in yourself. No matter what your background might be, as an entrepreneur you would always need to sell : to your customers, to your prospective hires and employees, to your investors.
  • Always look to hire better than yourselves.
  • Less is more. It’s much more important to figure out what features your product should Not have than what features it should have. Start-up that thrives does One thing right and better than anyone else, that addresses one key pain-point felt by a big enough target set of users / customers.

According to you, what is the #1 mistake that most first-time tech startup founders make?

Point #3 above. Tech start up founders have the propensity to start building out the technology / product, without really understanding that key One thing that is needed in their target market, that they have a competitive advantage one. Achieving product – market fit is quite different than developing the technology. Key is focus and saying ‘no’ to features much more than saying ‘yes’.

GSF is looking for an EIR: Good opportunity for some Pune Techie

Miscellaneous, Pune City, , ,

@thinkSantosh (Santosh Dawara) points out that the GSF (Global Superangels Forum) is looking for an Entrepreneur in Residence, and hopes people from Pune will take this opportunity to increase their network, increase their exposure, and help improve Pune’s presence in the Indian and Global startup ecosystem.

More information about the EIR@GSF program is here.

What are they looking for?

An EiR (Entrepreneur in Residence) is a misfit, a rebel and a leader, who sees an opportunity for change everywhere he/she looks. An EiR is restless, looking for his/her next challenge, while engaging with the best and brightest startups in India. An EiR is a humble, go-­getter, rolling his/her sleeves up to get the job, any job, done.

EiRs will anchor GSF’s startup accelerator programs in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai by scouting, evaluating and aiding selection of the best startups from different regions of India. They will explore and drive strategic partnerships and expand GSF’s already robust mentor network of top entrepreneurs and executives in the tech community across the four cities. EiRs will also be responsible for designing and executing programming, managing logistics and buddy mentoring startups from MVP to Demo Day to eventual funding. EiRs are also awarded equity into the startups selected for GSF Accelerator.

See additional details in this YourStory article on GSF EiRs!

What qualifications are required?

For its inaugural program, GSF Accelerator inducted 17 EiRs who have have been entrepreneurs, students, investors, and ex-consultants. They have worked at some of the most exciting companies in the world and have educated from top tier educational institutions. Till date 30 EiRs have been part of GSF Acceleration program. For more details, please see the profiles of the GSF 2013 EiR
Team, and the GSF 2012 EiR Team.

Why is this being shared here?

Santosh says this:

I have no direct affiliation to GSF. But here’s why I suggested this,

In the near term an EIR is not a bad thing for an entrepreneur who is in-between ideas and is looking for a filler, or to simply grow his or her outlook, network.

In the long run, it will help us all immensely if any serious incubator were to consider a presence in Pune. If I may remind everyone, we are still missing the institutionalization of failures and successes of Punes startups. It helps to have one roof. As a result, every yr startups get going and attempt to reinvent without the benefit of what’s already been figured out by previous startups.

An incubator in Pune is atleast a step in that direction. If not that, having direct connections is the next best thing.

Can someone help me with the application?

Again, Santosh writes:

If the applicant is serious and has some of the necessary qualifications, I think there’s a lot of people on this list who will be willing to help in whatever way they can.

Pune’s Pubmatic gets $13MM funding; preparing for a $1B IPO?

Money Matters, News, , ,

Pubmatic, a software product company with solutions in the cloud and mobile advertising space, which is fully developed out of Pune, has just received $13 million in funding from Nokia Growth Partners, along with existing investors. This takes the total amount of funding raised by Pubmatic to $76 million.

Excerpt:

The company plans to use the investment raised to improve its platform and for International expansion. PubMatic CEO and co-founder Rajeev Goel is also quoted in the press release as saying this investment will improve its ”direct market access by plugging into the global NGP (Nokia Growth Partners) and Nokia presence.”

The more interesting, and speculative, report comes from the Wall Street Journal article, which claims that Pubmatic is getting ready for an IPO, and are hoping for a valuation in excess of $1 billion.

We have been hoping for a Pubmatic IPO for a couple of years now ever since they hired a CFO who specializes in IPOs. However, it appears to be taking a little longer than expected.

Let’s hope that Pubmatic soon becomes Pune’s first software product IPO.

References:
– Medianama
– Wall Street Journal

@PersistentSys acquires @CloudSquads – Pune/California based enterprise social media startup

Featured, Money Matters, News, , , ,

Pune’s Persistent Systems has just acquired CloudSquads, a Pune and San Francisco based startup that builds social apps for the enterprise market.

After cloud-computing and mobile, the new hottest trend in the industry is SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud), and CloudSquads is smack in the middle of this trend. CloudSquads builds products that help companies like E*Trade, GE, Autodesk to use social media for customer support, sales, marketing. In addition they build apps that can be used for providing private social networking features within the enterprise.

From the press release:

CloudSquads helps companies develop a strategy for engaging with the modern social customer across all customer facing functions including brand, marketing, sales and support. The company implements platforms which provide rich capabilities that transform these interactions into healthy communities and then integrates those platforms with companies’ internal systems allowing them to better know and serve their customers.

and also:

“Social communities are the natural next step in the evolution and enhancement of external systems of engagement with customers, following the 1-800 number and corporate web presence,” said Ashish Seth, Co-Founder of CloudSquads, Inc. “CloudSquads helps global brands unlock the power of social to realize dramatic increases in employee productivity, double digit improvements in marketing and sales effectiveness and dramatically lower support costs, said Henry Bruckstein, Co-Founder of CloudSquads, Inc. “Combining the global reach and broad technology capabilities of Persistent Systems will allow us to multiply the transformative impact in the market.”

Why is Persistent buying CloudSquads? According to Ranga Puranik, President of Persistent:

“CloudSquads complements our software product development and SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud) technology expertise with consulting, IP connectors and implementation services around social community platforms and is perfectly aligned to better serve our ISV and enterprise customer base.”

Persistent had recently reported that it had created “Persistent Venture Fund”, a venture fund to invest in early stage startups, mainly in the SMAC domain. Persistent Venture Fund’s first investment was in US-based ustyme, a free video call app for the iPad.

According to Anand Deshpande, CEO of Persistent, the fund will only invest in startups that are strategically interesting to Persistent’s business.

“We consider two aspects for selection. First is the technology area of the start-up and its similarity to our interests, and second the customers that it needs to align with our customer eco-system,” he added.

Pune’s Cuelogic acquires California based mobile apps development company

News, , ,

Pune based services company Cuelogic Technologies has just acquired the services arm of California based company Evolutionate, Inc. Excerpts from their press release:

The acquisition came out through a prior strategic partnership between the two companies in which Cuelogic offered Evolutionate and its customers, mobile application development services, cloud computing services and advanced testing services for their customers in enterprise and consumer software domain. Also, Cuelogic helped Evolutionate and its customers boost their internal team’s capacity and capabilities by providing them iOS and Android developers and designers for temporary and long-term assignments.

Last year, Cuelogic also acquired AU Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a mobile and web based game development company to boost and add game development services to the portfolio offerings.

Read the full press release

Pune based enterprise security firm Uniken raises investment from Nexus Venture Partners

Featured, Money Matters, , , , , ,

Pune-based enterprise security software company, Uniken, has just raised a round of funding from Nexus Venture Partners, reports the Economic Times. The amount of funding has not been disclosed, but the internet is claiming that it is around $4.8 million. This is Nexus’ second major investment

Uniken’s main product is the REL-ID platform which allows enterprise software to be accessed from remote clients (i.e. mobiles, laptops, or home computers of customers or employees) in a secure way, in spite of the fact that the client is connecting to the server via an untrusted internet connection.

Imagine a bank, which is able to give its customers a “secure” mobile app that connects to the bank servers over the internet, but then uses REL-ID’s “private communication circuts” to establish a secure connection between the app and the server. Similarly, imagine an the sales database of a company being accessed by one of the salespersons on the road using a laptop. REL-ID PCC can be used to secure the connection between the laptop and the enterprise app without requiring laptop to be on the company network, and without requiring a VPN.

So, how is Uniken’s solution different from using an SSL or IPSEC based VPN?

According to the company’s website, REL-ID PCC is based on the concept of App-to-App tunneling. VPN’s on the other hand are based on TCP/IP Tunneling technology. VPN’s are installed as virtual network adapters and need administrative rights on the client machine in order to install them. VPN’s do not come with in-built mutual authentication and encryption technologies, for that one has to additionally invest in 2-way SSL or IPSEC technologies, increasing the total cost and complexity of the solution. These solutions are not viable when it comes to roll-out to large number of users.

More information about the product is here and here.

The Economic Times reports:

The firm has filed three patents and expects to file 12 patents in next one year. “Uniken is disrupting the digital security space with this platform that provides military grade security with rich digital experience,” said Sandeep Singhal, managing director at Nexus.

So, in the last few days, we’ve made two additions to the list of Pune companies that have raised funding in recent times (and that is even without counting the 3rd round of funding for FirstCry, because that was already on the list.) Is any company missing from our list? Please let us know.

Baby products e-commerce retailer, Pune’s FirstCry.com raises Rs. 82cr funding

Featured, Money Matters, , , , ,

Pune’s FirstCry.com, a baby-products online retail store, has just raised Rs. 82 cr from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, and existing investors IDG Ventures, and Saif Partners, reports the Economic Times. This is FirstCry’s third round of funding. Previously FirstCry had raised $4 million in 2011, and $14 million in 2012.

Excerpts:

FirstCry, which has tied up with 500 brands, offers over 70,000 products including diapers, toys, toiletries, strollers, apparel and footwear as well as books and toys for children up to the age of 15 years. It also has 50 branded franchisee stores across 45 cities and expects to grow this network to 100 stores. It gets 20% of its revenue from mobile-based transactions.

First Cry was founded by Supam Maheshwari and Amitava Saha in December 2010. Before that, Supam was one of the founders of Pune based e-learning company Brainvisa Technologies, which was acquired by Indecomm Global Services for about $25 million in 2007. Amitava was a senior vice president at BrainVisa and had been there since 2003.