Vinayak Hegde

I had an opportunity to go to the NASSCOM Product Conclave held at Lalit Ashok, Bangalore on October 27, 28th as a representative of the Headstart.

Art of the Start

The star speaker and the crowd-puller was definitely Guy Kawasaki – The author of “Art of the Start” and “Reality Check”. He kept the audience engaged throughout the talk. I am not sure how much of the advice that he gave can be used for startups other than web/cloud startups. The slides of his talk are embedded below.

Krishna – Arjuna session

This session was moderated by Sanjay Anandram. This session explored the relationship between Krishna (The Advisor) and Arjuna (The Entrepreneur) fighting together to build and sell a product in the market (Kurukshetra). The discussion ranged from how to choose a mentor, to compensation issues (longer term equity or transactional) to having star advisor to advisors who give meaningful advice. It was a good interactive session and it was nice to hear both sides of the story as there were advisors as well as entrepreneurs present in the session.

Writing a business plan

I could not attend writing a business plan by Naeem Zafar but I heard it was good from other people. I have embedded the slides of the talk below:

Building global consumer businesses out of India

This was one of the best sessions in NASSCOM PC. Pallav Nandhani, CTO of Infosoft Global (which sells Fusion Charts). He started the business from his home on Kolkata and was initially the sole developer. He uses the FOSS model and licenses the penultimate version of his software under MIT and GPLv3 licenses. He used this to build credibility about his product as the market for charting software is highly fragmented. Also making the software fended off competition from the lower end of the market while at the same time reducing the cost of acquisition and trail to near zero. Pallav started the business when he was 17 ! A very inspiring story and he build his business while breaking several rules of conventional wisdom for startups. K Ganesh of Tutorvista spoke next and his business model was unusual as well. Tutorvista provides online tutoring to students across 28 countries. All the teachers that tutor students are located across India. How serial entrepreneur K Ganesh overcame challenges of infrastructure (power, computers and internet access) was fascinating. Also all the marketing was done online by deploying over 100,000 keywords using google adwords. They are one of the largest online ad spenders in India. The next speaker was Amit Ranjan of Slideshare. He spoke how he started and grew the company. An inspiration for Slideshare was youtube as it made embedding and sharing really easy and he had designed slideshare from ground up based on this thought process.

Technology opportunities for serving millions of Indians

This session was moderated by Ramesh Ramanathan of Janaagraha. He spoke about the lessons learned from his microfinance firm Janalakshmi. Sean Blagsvedt of Babajobs also shared some insight on the challenges he faced when building the business. Babajobs use technology to help people at the bottom of the pyramid find jobs. Their target market contains people such as drivers, maids, security personnel and cooks. Babajobs found that on average by harnessing technology to provide better matching these people were able to earn more while commuting less. This leads to getting more money into the hands of these people which means more buying power in the longer run. Sudhakar V -of Co-options works with farmers at an aggregate level (via co-operatives) providing them loans at better rates. V Rajashekar also talked about the e-choupal initiative which is very successful and how it is helping rural development. The e-choupal platform can be used to provide various services to farmers thus tapping the rural potential which so far has been untapped.

Startup ecosystem enablers

This discussion brought all of the ecosystem enabler together and brought forth some of the typical problems that entrepreneurs face and how to solve them. The topics that were most interesting is how to help the entrepreneur to take an idea and commercialize it and what are the gaps in the current ecosystem that are stopping it. Students today are aware of entrepreneurship as a career avenue unlike earlier but challenges remain such as peer pressure and the Indian social system that dissuades people from taking risk at a point when the can do it most easily (as you have very less to lose). Another fact was that unlike the silicon valley (which serves as a model for tech startups in India for better or worse), professors are not educated about possibilities for commercializing research unlike Stanford and other universities in the valley. Rosen Sharma of Mentor Partners gave the example of how John Hennessy encouraged students to start companies. Yahoo, Google and Granite systems were some of the companies that were founded when Rosen was studying in Stanford. This perhaps harks back to the deeply entrenched caste system in India where learning as a means (Brahmins) has higher social value than business (Vaishyas).

Overall it was a great conference as I got to meet several people who I knew only through mailing lists and other social media. I also felt that it was more of a startup conference rather than a product conference but that bias could be because I was selecting sessions based on speakers (mostly from startups) that I wanted to listen and interact with. Another probable reason is all the big mature IT companies in India are pursuing the services path and only now are people looking at starting product companies.

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

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.

Talk on SaaS and Cloud Computing by Vikram Murudeshwar, Akamai Technologies India.

Startup Saturday Bangalore, December was held at a Honeywell India which is just down the road from IIM Bangalore. Vikram Murudeshwar, my colleague from Akamai was the first speaker. His talk was on “Saas and Cloud Computing”. He dispelled some of the myths behind SaaS. SaaS has greatly levelled the playing field for startups. If you have product that is useful, your go-to-market time and time for rolling out incremental updates comes down phenomenally. Also as a provider, you have greater control over the environment in which your software is deployed. The picture is not completely rosy however as SaaS providers have to work harder to secure their customers data and ensure compliance. Cloud computing takes the concept of SaaS to the next level from just software to hardware and infrastructure for building and deploying software using virtualization and using intelligent network optimizations. Attendees had several technical questions regarding scaling a website from a single server to a distributed datacenter model. At this point, I jumped in to provide some answers based on my experience. It was a good interactive session with a mix of technical and business questions which continued into the snacks break.

The Presentation is below:

Collaboration between Honeywell and startups by Harsha Angeri, Honeywell India

After the snacks break, Harsha Angeri from Honeywell India spoke about the challenges bigger companies face to innovate and explore new areas of growth. The Honeywell program which will be announced shortly alongwith Headstart, will enable startups and Honeywell to collaborate with each other. The benefits to Honeywell are manifold with this collaboration – they get the domain expertise of the startups, they get to explore new areas without much risk and they get reach to the end-consumer in case of B2C startups as Honeywell deals mostly with B2B customers. The benefits to startups are also manifold – Startups gets access to the customer and realworld feedback, they also get Honeywell’s feedback in areas which Honeywell is strong and they also get the market reach and legitimacy by dealing with a larger company such as Honeywell. It’s a win-win situation for all those involved in this collaboration.

Lifemojo Demo by Namit Nangia

The last talk was by Namit Nangia – the CEO of Lifemojo. He dwelled on the importance of nutrition and how lifemojo pro (their product) which is delivered via a website can help their users lead a more healthy lifestyle. Lifemojo can help you come up with a personalized nutritional diet and users can also get in touch with nutrition experts using their web portal. The access to the website can also be provide busing mobiles so that people have access to their custom healthplans on the move. Lifemojo is a good product in the personal and preventive healthcare market niche – a nascent segment but a rapidly growing one. During the snacks break, Lifemojo had setup a laptop so people who were curious about Lifemojo product could testdrive and know more about it.

Click here for Startup Saturday November 2008 Edition.

The November edition of Startup Saturday Bangalore featured a talk by Sharda Balaji of Novojuris on “Legal pitfalls of a startup”. This was followed by the demo of citizenmatters.in by Meera K and Subramaniam Vincent.

Sharda Balaji is the founder and director of Novojuris which provides legal services to startups and entrepreneurs in the technology domain. She has managed the legal aspects of the Purvankara IPO and was previously working with Intel Technology India. She said that every entrepreneur should understand the concept and the intent of the law. Entrepreneurs address legal matters reactively only when they encounter difficulties which can cause complications and loss. She gave a brief overview of the legal forms for incorporating the company. Having worked with a corporate big law team as well as on her own she was able to give an insider’s perspective on how law firms operate and what are the criteria which a entrepreneur should follow while engaging with a lawyer or a law firm.

She also addressed some other issues such as capital structure of a company, equity allocation between founders and dilution during funding rounds. This was followed by an interesting and interactive discussion on moonlighting and skunkworks projects. Several entrepreneurs moonlight on their startups while working for another firm. They should clarify with their company’s policies regarding regarding intellectual property and conflict of interest agreements with their legal counsel. If this due diligence is not done, it can cause problems later on when the startup is incorporated even when the entrepreneurs has left his previous job. Her presentation is embedded below:

Citizen Matters is a Bangalore focused and citizen-oriented news publication. They publish in-depth news, analysis, features, opinions, and information/event listings, covering city public affairs, community and culture in Bangalore city. Citizen Matters is published by Oorvani Media, an independent local media firm founded by Bangaloreans Subramaniam Vincent and Meera K. Bangalore is a city in transition, with much of the growth of the city spurred with the help of migrants who fail to connect with the city. As a result many of the migrants are unaware of the local culture and local issues. This problem is not limited to migrant population but also to the people who have been living in the city for decades. Citizen matters deals with this problem by commissioning articles on local issues and by using citizen journalism. Currently, this is one area where mainstream media is found lacking.

Citizen Matters is built on Ruby on Rails and extensively uses open source software. Citizen matters is a for-profit startup which plans to raise money by selling advertising and doing public-funded journalism. One of the suggestions was to raise money using micropayments from readers to cover local issues such as traffic problems or development of lakes. There was a good interactive discussion on social media and the use of technology which followed this. Do visit their site at citizenmatters.in. The presentation by Citizen Matters is embedded below: