Vinayak Hegde

Nokia had a free touch the tune concert at Palace Grounds featuring the Raghu Dixit Project, Karsh Kale and MIDIval Punditz. On Friday, I got a chance to meet Raghu Dixit and Gaurav Vaz from the Raghu Dixit project at Cafe Coffee Day.

After getting passes from them, I inadvertently blurted out that I was looking forward to hearing Karsh Kale (who is one of my favourite artists). Raghu heard that comment and then started pulling my leg. I also met Swaroop and Varun from Ionlabs who are also fans of the Raghu Dixit Project. After a dinner with Swaroop and Varun at the Sigma mall (Moti Mahal in Sigma Hall has really good ‘Butter Chicken’), I left for home.

Next day, I reached the venue early and had a chat with some people from the RAVE magazine in London. I also met Kalyan at the venue who was also photographing the concert. The crowds started coming in at about 8pm and the concert started a bit late with Raghu Dxit project being the opening act. I had access to the stage and backstage. They played some of their hits such as ‘Hey Bhagwan’ , ‘Mysore se Aayi’ , ‘Khidki’ and ‘Gudgudiya’. Raghu was his witty self and had the crowd on their feet within no time with people requesting their favourite songs and singing along.

They were followed by Midival Punditz and Karsh Kale who were playing together for the first time in Bangalore. They played some of their hits such as ‘Milan’ , ‘Ali’ and ‘Bhangra Fever’ amongst others. The last song played was ‘Banao’. It was a funny song which chronicles the making of a rolling of ganja (cocaine) for a smoke. It is an unreleased song but is available for download as an bootleg mp3 on the web according to the MIDIval Punditz singer.

After the concert I was got to talk to Karsh Kale and Midival Punditz back stage. I was able to show him the photos of him taken during the concert. It was great to meetup with him. I have been listening to his music for more than 3-4 years and it was dream come true.

More here

We traveled from Bangalore overnight to Sagar and from there went to a short trip to nearby village. A 20 minute trek later we were at the shores of the Sharavathy river. Since we were planning to stay on a river island for 2 days we had to coracle across with our luggage. It was tough initially to use the coracle as it requires that the rowers on each side of the coracle row in synchronization with the weight evenly distributed across the bowl shaped coracle. If this is not done then the coracle circles in the same place or becomes lop-sided and can even topple. However we managed to get across with a little struggle to the island. As this is a nature camp we could relax under the tree while sleeping on foam mats. We were to live on this island without electricity and very basic amenities for that day and the next. Later in the afternoon we had a swim in the sharavathy river. The water was really clean and we use it to fill our bottles for drinking water (after going slightly away from the slightly muddy shores).

Clear waters of the Sharavathy River	The view from the campsite
A bison skull on the banks of the river	A fallen tree trunk

Early in the after noon we took a tour of the connected islands. I say connected islands as these are low lying regions that connect some adjacent islands. But these low lying regions cut off these islands in the rainy season when the water level rises. I saw a skull of a bison lying on the shores. Probably the bison had got stranded on one of the isolated island with no trees and died. Later in the afternoon we had a round of water sports after lunch (which was cooked on the island itself by local guides). We then headed out west by coracle to one of the island so that we could have a clear view of the beautiful sunset. A little bit of trekking on the island and a little wait later we could see the amazing sunset from the river shores with the water reflecting the last rays of the sun and the barren trees in the water giving it an eerie feel. After sunset as the light started fading we set out to the coracle in a hurry so that we could reach our camping island before nightfall. We were now got used to rowing the coracle and it did not take as long as the earlier trips across the river. After a lively discussion during the campfire and dinner under the clear skies we setup tents and dozed off.

The moulted skin of a millipede	Me in the Sharavathy backwaters
Me sitting on the banks of the Sharavathy.	Amazing sunset

Sharavathy Valley Day 2

We woke up early in the morning just before sunrise so that we could take photos of the rising sun. It was quite bright before sunrise itself. After having tea we headed out to have another round of water sports, this time learning to kayak and raft. Kayaking looked easy when the local guides used it to traverse the route from the island to the other shore but it was anything but easy. The wind blowing across the river made kayaking a little difficult. As there were only 6 people in the group other than me, we got quite a lot of time for kayaking. I was able to kayak fairly well after a couple of failed attempts as I understood how to use my weight and balance to steer the kayak even in the wind. In that sense Kayaking was similar to cycling or swimming. Once you overcome the steep learning curve and get into a rhythm it is an extremely pleasurable and effortless activity. After this we had a round of rafting. Rafting was by far the easiest of all the three water sports that we tried though it also required synchronisation between the left and right oarsmen. It was a breeze after all the struggles learning to coracle and kayak. All the water sports made me famished and hungry. We had a tasty meal of akki rotis and sabzi before we headed out for a trek in the afternoon.

The colours of sunrise	Kayaking in the Sharavathy Backwaters
View from the top of the hill after the trek	Small green bee-eaters on the way back to Sagar

A little rest after lunch and we on our way across the mountain to avail the bus that would take us to Sagar. The trek did not seem that tough initially when we started but the exertion of water sports in the morning and the sun beating down mercilessly (my being out of shape did not help either) meant it was tough going. I managed to reach the top with some difficulty as the slope was fairly steep in places. The trek was made tougher by the fact that we had only a 1 litre of water between the seven of us. We managed to reach the to and were awarded with amazing views. The hard climb was well worth it. After a bit of rest we descended down the other side of the hill which was fairly easy. We waited for the bus and went to Sagar and then onto bangalore after having dinner at Sagar.

Headstart 2009 went off really well. I could not attend many of the talks as I was making sure the startups were not having problems in the demo-pit and scheduling VC-startup meetings. Some very good products startups demoed at Headstart 2009 including Indusgeeks, CashNXT, Verismo, TringMe, WisdomTap, Jobeehive, Meshlabs and Artin dynamics. The startups that demoed at Headstart were of the highest quality and won many awards at the International level as well.

• Verismo won the best of the Best award at CES 209 in the Media technology category.
• NetPrice Services- ( AdoRoi ), is among World’s 100 most innovative, disruptive and high growth companies, driving the future of technology. They made the “Red Herring 100″
• Tringme was featured on Gigaom and CNN Money.
• CashNXT was featured on ReadWriteWeb

The entreprenuer’s roundtable (especially Sujai Karampuri’s talk) and Ashish Gupta’s Keynote on second day generated a lot of buzz. Luckily I was able to attend Ashish Gupta’s keynote. It was excellent. For those who missed it the videos whould be up sometime next week. (If you want to be notified of that please follow @headstartdotin on twitter or join the friends-of-kickstart mailing list).

The photos are also up at Flickr.

Satish Mugulavalli – Founder of Verismo Networks demoing Vunow

Aditya Mishra (Director, Headstart) and Anant Krishnan (CTO of TCS) after announcing the Co-innovation program in collaboration with Headstart.

Kallol Borah (Director, Headstart) inaugurating Headstart and Compute 2009

Prasad Ram, CTO, Google India talking at the Cloud Computing Tutorial

Rameena Rabeedin of CashNXT demoing their product in the Consumer Products Section

Anthony Hsaio of Entrip demoing their Webapp in Consumer Products Section

Sujai Karampuri delivering his hard hitting talk on VCs in the Entrepreneur Panel

Venki Nishtala, CTO, Rediff talk at the Cloud Computing Tutorial

Dr Chandrakant Patel keynoting at Headstart / Compute 2009

Press conference during Headstart / Compute 2009

Apul Nahata demoing VoicePHP product lauched by Tringme

The ragtag bunch of volunteers that made Headstart / Compute 2009 happen

We were also able to use the social media effectively. Quite a few Many people wre talking about Headstart and it trended on Twitter. Here is a screen shot of the same

The best part was the startups enjoyed it and were able to talk to investors. More than 15 VCs / Angels / Early stage investors attended the event. There were more than 150+ one-on-one meetings with startups with 27+ startups that I know of. I am counting only the formal ones as the VCs got a chance to talk to individuals startups at the demo-pit. Al in all it was great success as we got all the stake holders in the system together.

The Colocated technology conference ACM Compute 2009 also went off well with the ‘Cloud Computing’ and the Search and Social Platforms’ attracting the most crowds. More tech deep-dive tutorials are planned in the coming months. Also Srinivas annonced the launch of Distinguished Speakers Program at Compute 2009. Details about that soon. Join the ACM Bangalore mailing list for updates.

Press coverage was good with Times of India and Deccan Herald covering us among others.
Links to online press coverage:

• CIOL – 10 Best Product startups
• IT Examiner – Meltdown causes slump in Indian Startups
• Silicon India – Risk Averse VCs
• Silicon India – Cloud Computing in India
• CXOToday – Startups don’t address Customer issues
• CXOToday – Internet Based startups Hit Indian Market

The Jaisalmer Fort rises in the middle of the desert and shines in the morning sun thus earning the moniker “Sonar Kella” (The Golden Fort). The golden colour of the fort is due to the sandstone reflecting the rising or the setting sun. Sonar Kella was also the name of a detective novel by Satyajit Ray which was later made into a film.

More technical details about the photo at my photoblog (click on Image Info).

We had a lot of nominations for the demo pit and on stage demos at HeadStart and Compute 2009 and it was tough to narrow down the field to 20 odd participants for the demo-pit. I had a tough time handling all the feedback from the judges and communicating it back to more than 100 startups that had applied during the holiday season. But it was worth it. Here is the final list of startups that will be present in the demo-pit. Amongst them the cover all the kinds of startups from across India (self-funded / seed-funded / VC funded as well as various stages of product development amongst them). The ones to demo on stage will be announced on the 9th of January at the event venue. You can see these kickass startups demo on stage and in the demo-pit by registering for Headstart 2009.

Cashnext is founded by serial entrepreneurs Anish Achutan and Rameena Rabeedin (who are still in their 20s). Cashnext builds products such as low cost ATMs, smart teller machines, P-O-S terminals, a mobile payment and branchless banking gateway.

Indusgeeks is India’s first and largest Virtual Worlds’ Development and Services company based in Mumbai. Indusgeeks creates 3D immersive spaces on the Internet for Education and Training, Marketing and Communications and Virtual Events. Metamersive Learning Spaces is a solution developed by Indusgeeks to address the enterprise, higher education and K-12 market. MLS looks to improve delivery of education and training through interactive, multi-user, real time virtual spaces. MLS will be available under both the Software as a Service (SaaS) and Licensed software models.

TringMe is the world leader in web-based telephony and was the first one to demonstrate flash-based telephony. It provides a carrier grade unified communications platform which handles over 20 million calls every month. TringMe’s vision has been provide easy to use APIs to developers so that they can quickly, reliably and tightly integrate voice in web and mobile applications.

SysNucleus build products and solutions in the system software space. Sysnucleus has expertise in areas like Windows device drivers, USB, Bluetooth, Virtual device drivers, Wireless sensor networks and other embedded related software. They are self funded and based out of Cochin, Kerala and will demo their product USBTrace.

Kreeo is a user-driven collective intelligence and semantics based knowledge management platform for both individuals and enterprise. Kreeo enables sharing and collaboration in knowledge ecosystems to enhance productivity. Kreeo is provided as Open Web and Enterprise Suite. Kreeo Enterprise is provided as SaaS or Captive Implementation model along with customization and content related services.

JobeeHive.com is a unique professional-social network focused around employer and salary information. JobeeHive.com enables users to rate/review companies (they have worked for), research on salaries or a prospective employer as well as get more info about a company – be it job offers, announcements, business opportunities, etc.

Alertpedia.com is a comprehensive online alerting service for delivering the right information at the right time. You specify what you like to be alerted about (e.g., bike on sale on Bangalore Craigslist, food recalls). alertpedia monitors several reliable online sources, and alerts you over SMS/Email when the relevant event happens. Alertpedia is a self-funded start-up based out of Bangalore and New Jersey.

WOLF is a 100% browser based Web Application Designing & Development Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for creating mashable and interoperable Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Business Applications on the internet without writing a single line of technical code. It provides a quick, easy, flexible and cost effective way of building customized web applications, targeted towards Business Users.

Travelgrid is a product by Channel mentor that helps automate the travel policy process. Channel Mentor has widened the scope of the product to include visa request, insurance request and guest house room inventory. The Travelgrid product is delivered using the SaaS model.

CinnamonTeal Print and Publishing provides services for individuals and institutions that wish to self-publish. These services include editing, proof reading, cover design, page layout, translation, digitization, factual research and other similar services. The digital print-on-demand service is central to their service and can do print runs from one to more than 500.

Entrip tries to solve the main pain-point for consumers in online travel – the lack of usability and user friendliness on the (online travel) web, as well as in the fragmentation of online travel service. EnTrip has developed a new kind of web application and user interface: completely Map based and interactive to overcome this problem.

Biokleen Labs manufactures natural, non-toxic cleaning products for home or business use. Biokleen products are concentrated in order to leave the smallest footprint on the environment and deliver exceptional quality, value and results without negative effects to the user or the environment. The products are biodegradable, release no harsh fumes and are gentle to sensitive skin.

SnappyFingers is a Question and Answer search engine. It crawls and indexes FAQs on the Internet and displays search results in a easy to view Question/Answer format. The site is in beta, and has a database of approximately 10 million questions. SnappyFingers uses Amazon Web Services such as EC2 and S3 to build a generic framework which is scalable and fault tolerant.

Verismo Networks is redefining the home television experience by bringing millions of free internet videos around the world directly to your TV — all of this without a computer. Verismo’s VuNow platform transforms the TV set into a powerful multimedia hub with an unbelievable level of choice and ease in accessing digital entertainment. Verismo Networks is a privately held company based in Mountain View, California, with offices in Bangalore, India

CashURdrive is India’s first and only “On-Vehicle Advertising Company”. People can put promotional corporate stickers on their self-owned vehicles by signing up with CashURdrive and go by their daily routines. The vehicle mileage is verified using satellite tracking and the car owners are reimbursed with free fuel at HPCL and BPCL fuel pumps.

Ktwo is a innovative product based company based in Bangalore employing more than 250 people. KTWO specialises in last metre connectivity products which cater to the healthcare, logistics and automotive industry verticals. Ktwo will demo Kspeak – a bluetooth-based hands-free car kit.

Netprice is a award winning startup (Red Herring Asia 100 Winner, Red Herring Global 100 Finalist 2008). Their product AdoRoi is a solution to advertisers for measuring the ROI of all media types on a single platform which makes performance of conventional ads comparable to performance of online ads in real time. AdoRoi business method is patent pending in USA and copyrighted in India.

Artin Dynamics is a company delivering products in the AI domain. Their product SPARA helps companies save and manage power costs related to computers and peripherals. It is capable of conducting high level power management features like monitor control, core handling, CPU throttling as well as the normal power management options like Hibernate, Shut down, Standby on a distributed network. The hardware unit works on patented technology known as ETL or Enhanced Trigger Loop and interfaces with the computer using a USB port.

AuthWave Technologies is a Bangalore based consumer security software startup. They have developed a fundamentally new approach to Internet security. AuthWave’s MobiAuth product is a mobile based integrated two-factor user authentication and transaction security solution to protect online portals against all threats including most sophisticated phishing and malware attacks.

MeshLabs Inc.™ is a developer of software solutions that discover and deliver concept-based personalized knowledge from any given content source. Meshlab’s solutions are built using emerging technologies in the areas of semantic web, human-machine synergy, enterprise 2.0, and social networking. For enterprises, MeshLabs offers eZi™ as a standalone or add-on solution in license and SaaS model. Consumers on the web are offered ZiMesh™, our semantic PKM service at www.zimesh.com (currently in private beta).

Taroby is a SaaS based messaging and collaboration suite that enables sharing of email accounts among team members. “Sharing” implies that emails are accessible to all team members working on a particular assignment or project, with the possibility to assign messages directly to individual team members.

WisdomTap is based out of Bangalore. WisdomTap helps users decide which product to buy based on their unique needs. At the same time, it helps online retailers increase sales by converting more browsers to buyers. Wisdomtap crawls the best social media sources to generate impartial product reviews, ratings and recommendation, based on patent pending algorithms. Users access this decision making information via the web, the retailer website and the mobile phone.

iDuple is a self-funded startup. iDuple’s Small Business Startup Kit is a SaaS[Software as a Service] product, where customers only need to pay a particular amount every month to subscribe to the service. The package includes all the necessary web softwares required for a startup or SME. This package makes the life of any startup or SME easier as they do not need to worry about the IT infrastructure anymore, and thus they can concentrate on their core business.