Headstart & Compute 2009 Event Report
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 |
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| Aditya Mishra (Director, Headstart) and Anant Krishnan (CTO of TCS) after announcing the Co-innovation program in collaboration with Headstart. |
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| Kallol Borah (Director, Headstart) inaugurating Headstart and Compute 2009 |
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| Prasad Ram, CTO, Google India talking at the Cloud Computing Tutorial |
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| Rameena Rabeedin of CashNXT demoing their product in the Consumer Products Section |
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| Anthony Hsaio of Entrip demoing their Webapp in Consumer Products Section |
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| Sujai Karampuri delivering his hard hitting talk on VCs in the Entrepreneur Panel |
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| Venki Nishtala, CTO, Rediff talk at the Cloud Computing Tutorial |
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| Dr Chandrakant Patel keynoting at Headstart / Compute 2009 |
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| Press conference during Headstart / Compute 2009 |
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| Apul Nahata demoing VoicePHP product lauched by Tringme |
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The ragtag bunch of volunteers that made Headstart / Compute 2009 happen  |
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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
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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
I have checked all the product launched and it is really fantastic. We Indian can also do innovative products and can reach on top in international market.
nice to hear from you vinayak