A little past mid-night, today as I reminiscence about the highs and lows of Headstart as a team, it hits me that we have been around for so long, the little kid who walked into a Startup Saturday in 2009 has come a long way. I would take this opportunity to run you through some beliefs and commitments upon which Headstart stands.

We refer to our city heads as ‘leads’. We believe they are leaders and not mere organizers. If I may quote the Startup Saturday organizers manual – ‘we are not running a media company organizing events, we are a community of entrepreneurs’. Each city chapter is driven by a lead. As they grow, the city chapter grows. Thus each city team has its own life cycle. As new members join into the volunteering team, the baton is passed to them.

Headstart is better known for its monthly event, Startup Saturday, but the folks who have been in the ecosystem for long have witnessed ‘Headstart’. The bi-annual event that Headstart did until 2010 and it was madness. For a kid who has at best organized a fun-n-fair in his locality, a mega startup showcase was a new paradigm all together. And when the team discusses action at an AGM, the talks are about meeting the needs of our customers. Yes, indeed we are a non-profit, but we refer to our community as our customers.

Most Startup Saturday chapters might remain free, but every call with our leadership team talks about making a difference to our customers. We may no longer be doing those mega startup showcases (no reason why we won’t in future), but our intent to make an impact to the ecosystem is the same. Each passing year, Headstart is re-invented and the onus to do the same is on young entrepreneurs who lead us through the change.

As a lead, I don’t work for Headstart, I am Headstart. And these words from who passed the baton to me, sums it up.

(During the organizing of Headstart March 2010 in Hyd, Jyoti from our BLR team referred to me as a co-founder in a communication with one of the partners. I shot a personal reply to her with a couple of HS co-founders marked in cc, clarifying that I am not a co-founder of Headstart… here is the reply from one of the Headstarters)

I would insist to disagree!

We all who graduate to the level of shareholders are co-founders of Headstart. Its so because we all have a stake in its success and because Headstart keeps going through re-inventions through each one of us.

 

If we have to get very technical and look at who came up with the idea – it was one person Kesava. He also got the initial team together. In that sense there are no cofounder and only one founder.

 

So Annkur and Jyoti you may have joined the journey later; you are cofounders as much as anyone because you have the responsibility of reinventing Headstart and keeping it relevant as anyone else. It actually more than what others carry because you’ll probably be around for longer than the earlier people.

Delhi

‘Entrepreneurship is definitely not for the fainter heart’ he started. Though technological advancement has made a lot of tasks easier to execute, the challenge of creating something out of nothing has pretty much remained the same. Loved the parallels he drew between product and personal chasms. He pointed out while the former has just one, on a personal level there exists many. Surviving through these chasms as an entrepreneur is what defines his success. He indicated that one has to be ready to disrupt his/her comfort zones to reach where he wishes to be.

He then spoke of how the formative years of one’s life and experiences define a individual’s experiential DNA which in turn builds his/her pattern of existence.His five valuable lessons on entrepreneurship had the audience listening with rapt attention to their teacher. Shirish interleaved his lessons with anecdotes from his professional life that brought in a great deal of perspective. To sum it up, the lessons Shirish shared, will definitely linger on, in our minds, for long. The simplicity of idea and clarity of thought appealed the audience in a big way.

Startup Saturday Ahmedabad looks forward to having a great 2012 after a great start. We wish to build a stronger community here with many more success stories to narrate.

To attend Startup Saturday in your city, register here

Update: Mr Shirish has been kind enough to do a longer post with his slides and notes here. Do give it a read!

By Nagashree Iyer

(Headstart Ahmedabad)

The theme for E Week 2012 calls upon young people to ‘Invent the Future’ as successful entrepreneurs, by providing innovative solutions to address the many large issues that communities across the country strive to cope with: availability of clean water, garbage and waste management, accessible healthcare, reliable power and growing pollution. .

As a special feature of E Week – “EWeek@Schools” – will reach out to school students in the age group of 7-16 years in schools across the country. They will be introduced to the possibilities and ideas of entrepreneurship through the Rs. 50 exercise – an experiential business lesson, by college students and faculty from NEN E Cells.

Let me begin this blog by asking the question which each and every member wants to know- Was the last session- the so called “Special Startup Saturday” truly special? You bet. It definitely was, let me tell you why and what made it the perfect closure event for Startup Mumbai for 2011

Event began on a special note with Annkur joining the already charming and highly energetic Himanshu on the introduction part with a jhatpat recap of how SS started and why it exists. Once done with the audience introduction which comprised of our standard crowd of engineers/hackers, working professionals across industries, some aspirants who are chasing their big dream and some who have already been walking the entrepreneurial journey from quite some time- the session finally kicked off to an informative session.

As the title promised- sessions did focus on the building blocks of business from the legal aspects to marketing, HR, Sales and other nittiy gritties of the business which were further covered in detail. SSMUM still had the very special Lightning pitches (LP) made by the entrepreneurs which has always been giving them ground to showcase their new ventures.

The Lightening Pitches

Session began with one of the most lucrative offer for all the budding entrepreneurs out there – “ZEPO” by Nitin Purswani offered individuals willing to start something on their own an opportunity to open their online shop. Sharing a successful story of one of their already growing clientele is a 45year old lady who is running her home-made chocolate business using the simple, and easy to use interface designed by ZEPO. The beauty of the idea is in its simplicity and fulfilling the basic need of entrepreneurs which I am sure many more will soon be making use of. [Presentation]

The next LP session became a cherry on the cake by going a step further to the website you get designed for your business idea.  Jayesh Sidhwani with his product “InteractEasy” allows your users to have a voice interaction facility with you/your helpdesk  by installing an app on your website. This session raised some interesting pointers on the text-chat vs voice-chat in terms of manpower feasibility, concurrency, time efficiency and ultimately cost efficiency for the business owner. But with a free beta version available out there for Start-ups, I would say its worth giving a shot and find out the answers yourself. (Any feedback welcomed) I hope Jayesh did understand the concern people had with regards to scalability of his dream. [Presentation]

The third LP for the day introduced “Tunebasket”, where entrepreneur Mukul Majumdar is proposing to manage your music across different devices where the need for such a product was assessed and several advances were presented to enhance its attractiveness.

Sales: Hands-on experience sharing by Waqar Azmi

The podium was then taken over by an in-depth dive into the topic of “Sales”  by Waqar Azmi’s sharing his own experiences on his journey with “Sutra HR Services”. Starting with catchy differential definition of Marketing as paisa kharch  and Sales as paisa vasool , the session focused on the elements of Selling and its various concepts applicable in his personal as well as audience-shared experiences.

Ending the session with an ultimate statement of busting the fad of “part-time Entrepreneurship”, Waqar emphasized on the importance of going all the way in and not just partially in order to make things happen for yourself and your business.

How the startup funding game actually works?

The next session provided answers to many queries and shattered several myths that entrepreneurs have about funding and investors. An extended session by Bhavish Agarwal of Ola Cabs, taken over by a joint session of Vikram Vora  of “My Dentist” and Mahesh Murthy of “Seedfund” provided some absolutely wonderful insights on the journey of an Investor and Investee and how both sides are faced with their own set of challenges and opportunities to make things happen.

While Bhavish kickstarted by sharing his own learning during the funding course. Vikram and Mahesh together discussed about how they decided to invest, revamp and scale Vikram’s My Dentist. The session gave a clear insight on how the process functions and what to expect at various milestones (which is nowhere covered in any book)

A surprise chuckle for the crowd

After all the serious talk in the first-half, we all were then taken on a humor ride by Vipul Goyal of “Humorously Yours”. A very fine blend of some very interesting stories and jokes that filled the whole room with some good amount of laughing energy and geared them up for the next in line sessions of HR, Marketing and Legal & Accounting aspects of business.

HR fundas for your Startup

Second half started with Deep Gnatra of Web1 sharing his experience on acquiring, managing and retaining talent for your organization. Deep’s experiential sharing triggered many other audience sharing and ended with the note that there is no one-set solution approach to the HR issues in your organization. However, there are certain aspects that cannot be ignored- taken up by Sudhakar from “Husys” providing a very in-depth guideline on the fundamentals of HR aspects for your business starting point. [Presentation]

Digital Marketing for Startups

The next session by Himanshu Mody of “Tekno Point” sharing his 11-years of experience of marketing his business on the model of “word of mouth”, brought the concepts of feedback, recommendations and importance of trust not just within your business but also with the entities related with it. Experiential insights on how he was able to use these elements  for his marketing strategy provided a different line-of-thought of “marketing” for one’s business.

So ready to take the plunge ?

And the best was saved for the last with Anshul and Ashish of GlobalEx taking the audience through legalities and process of setting up a company. The session discussed the fundamentals of the business entity with their respective requirements, advantages and disadvantages. Insights on the best practices and most common errors that entrepreneurs make surely provided the much needed understanding of the first steps of becoming an entrepreneur. [Presentation]

So at the end of the day the effort of covering the building blocks of a business was well received. This was all possible because of active contribution by all of you. Please keep the support and feedback coming in to make this journey an exciting one.

Author – Pallavi Pareek is a regular volunteer at Startup saturday Mumbai and has worked hands on with several startups.

As the session got hotter we cruised from missed call culture to youth culture. Next presentation was by Mayank Bathaja, the co-founder of Letsintern.com, a company which is not only changing the way college students are thinking about their careers but also helping popular brands connect with youth market. Mayank was gracious in opening up and sharing his startup journey, which actually started on a drinks table. Even though his startup is very young and has already faced a few lows but the team’s persistence and hard work is now fetching good results, another testimonial to the spirit of entrepreneurship.

The session moved on with a demo of pitchbucket.in by Co-founder Bhavesh Dhapar. The presenter explained the product as crowdsourced photo sharing application. The presentation evoked some discussion on the need and uniqueness of the product, which was ably defended by the founding team.

Last session of the day was conducted by Sanjay, who was the expert of the day. Sanjay is an entrepreneur, angel investor and a technology veteran, with tremendous sales experience. Sanjay described sales as the oxygen of a startup and with the help of many real life instances adequately established the need of a passionate sales focus in any startup.

Finally the session ended with some networking over snacks. We thank American Centre for letting us use the premises and, also to all the presenters and attendees for making it a successful event. We look forward to meet you again next month.

By Vansh Kapil

HeadStart Network Foundation has partnered with Nasscom Product Conclave once again. As things fall in place for the event in November, Headstart Co-founder Ramesh Loganathan shares his experience with Nasscom Product Conclave. Ramesh has been an active volunteer for Nasscom Product Conclave and who better than him to tell us what to expect this year from Nasscom Product Conclave!

Amazing to see How Nasscom Product conclave has transformed in the past three years. From being a very stiff MNC product company centric to a very inclusive forward looking startups’ and going-global-from-India centric! It all started with Nasscom deciding to engage with startup grassroots and reaching out to orgs including HeadStart.

Few of us started engaging actively and pitching in to curate sessions, get panelists and most importantly get startups to participate. This worked very well. So much that in two years, it turned out to be a very startup centric event. Last year 600 of the 1100 attendees were from startups. All major ecosystem orgs were actively present and helping- HeadStart, Proto, Mobile Monday, ITsAP et al. Most leading academic incubation centers including IIT-B SINE and IIIT-H were present. And needless to say, everyone that was anyone in the VC/investments space was there as well.

Amazing buzz at the event. Lot of networking happening. Lot of connections established. Everyone getting a good feel for the scale, breadth and depth of the innovation and results at the startups. And this year, we will expect lot more of it. Both through the continuing focus on startups at Nasscom conclave and more so through the very steadily increasing pace of new startups starting and growing. Just in Hyderabad at the startup saturday each month, from seeing just one or two new startups a year ago, we now see 6-10 each month! Very encouraging trend. Am sure we will see lot more of this at the Nasscom Product conclave this year. See you there.

The dynamics of running a business are constantly changing. New rules, new players, new methodologies, new opportunities and new business paradigms. There are multiple “Forces @ Work“. This year, the “never miss” NASSCOM Product Conclave deliberates these very “Forces @ Work” and equips you with powerful ideas that will help you build and take your product to the customer.

With best speakers from around the world in software products business, the conclave is THE PLACE to connect with Indian products ecosystem. Register now to avail a special discount.

Sensing lack of credible data on the trends of entrepreneurship, we have taken on this ambitious project to research about the trends of entrepreneurship in India. The report which, inter alia, will cover top needs of a startup in India and the region-wise trends on technology startups, will be shared freely with participants of this research. It will also be used to develop better products for Headstart so that we can serve you more effectively.

We have ourselves participated in the survey located at http://bit.ly/HS-Research. We can testify that it takes less than 2 minutes to fill and we’d highly appreciate if you could answer in as much detail as feasible. Any data entered in this form will not be shared with any of our partners without your knowledge.

Before you begin, we thank you for taking your time out to consider participating in our research. We look forward to having you with us in many of our future initiatives.

The Theme

Talking about clean tech we start thinking about recycling waste to make something all commend but no one buys. We think about the climate change speeches, NGOs, corporate social responsibility and all. Is there a Business sense to all this? A remote possibility is all we can say. This was about to be tilted head over heels at SSMUM. The speakers talked about why clean tech is a golden opportunity to be grabbed and how innovative solutions are bashing our futile assumptions.

The speakers

The first in the list was Professor Dipankar from Treelabs. Dipankar has been a speaker at SSMUM earlier. A small demo of a device that can be used for metal welding is all that he needs to prove the power of what Treelabs is doing. Multiple times smaller, light enough that even a child can hold it, no need for any eye protection cover- Do you believe this device can do all that? What if we say you can touch the device with your bare hands! Dipankar talked about how our pedagogy is incapable of coming out with more innovations that the world needs today. A simple machine like a ceiling fan works at a whopping 1% of efficiency and if this is the case you are clear with the kind of opportunity this industry holds

Post Dipankar we had Anirudh, CEO of Carbon Clean Solutions. Anirudh holds 2 patents and has developed a unique venture which helps capture carbon emitted in the environment and convert it by liquefying which can be later used for various purposes. Did you ever imagine you can actually capture the carbon coming out of those long necked chimneys and convert into a soft drink to serve! Anirudh even talked about the importance of execution with respect to clean tech. The best quote was a simple idea he said “A customer is the best person who can tell you what he requires”.

Next we had Nitesh Mehta from Newreka technologies. He introduced his thought process with the help of the term Enviropreneurship. Newreka currently provides value based R&D services along with in house developed products as offerings. Nitesh described how he kept on customizing his offerings and gave the best value when it came to clean tech to his customers. It was definitely unconventional for this industry. A low cost helps him pitch customers and then showcase the capabilities of his products, this way he is able to overcome the resistance that he initially faced. A noteworthy formula that he shared was Environment Impact Factor or EIF which simply means Kgs of waste / Kgs of product. He even stated that this variable is very high for Pharma products and a big opportunity to tap in.

The Money

With so many ideas popping and a huge crowd of idea hunters, the next immediate concern was about investment. Clean Tech unlike other industries requires good capital investment in the initial phases. Whether it’s for R&D or procuring fixed assets, it is important to be cash rich in the earlier stage. Here’s where discussion from Sarvanan Nattanmai of Neureus Capital was helpful. He discussed about what an investors looks forward to before betting on a startup in this domain. He even addressed several questions in the same context.

Post Sarvanan was Anuj Maheshwari (Eco Reco) who addressed issues regarding E-Waste management. The lack of proper waste management not only pollutes the whole environment but also results in permanent energy loss. It is an irony that while few of us are chanting the Go Green mantra, others still prefer to sell their junk to Kabadiwallahs who pay more than what ventures like Eco Reco or other startups can provide. We would have to think beyond what we are getting and look it from a humanitarian perspective. Anuj helps corporate clients recycle their e-waste, get the data from the recycler (either onsite or offsite) and maintain confidentiality at the same time. A field which has huge potential as norms are getting stricter in every nation including India.

Finally before a panel discussion we had Rajesh Roy from Eureka Forbes who briefed how companies like his are trying to put their effort in the area of clean tech. Simpler water purifying solutions that they develop not just helps providing clean water to villagers, it also enables SSI entrepreneurs who maintain these purifiers. From waterless toilets to usage tracking water showers Rajesh discussed how simple and sensible innovations can change the world we live in today. A very insightful and timely presentation to say the least.

The Panel discussion

Post all the speakers provided insights from their expertise the show concluded with an insightful debate between our Panelists. A slew of members including but not limited to Unmesh Brahme, Ashok Jain, Pratik Singhi, Karon Shaiva, Myshkin Ingawale, Neha Juneja formed part of the panel discussion with the audience. Questions as to why clean tech is not ‘really’ taking up, what can be the immediate action steps etc become very important when we start thinking about opportunities clean tech has? It was an interactive playground of thought, well managed by the host Atul Seksaria who kept the show rocking!

These sessions as I earlier said are the ones that completely change the way you think about an industry or domain. The show was attended by more than 100 people and it was good to have such a huge audience as Startup Saturday celebrated its 3rd Birthday in Mumbai this very month! Quick thanks to all the participants, speaker and volunteers from the HeadStart who made this event possible and special. Startup Saturday today has really become a platform for people to learn, network and benefit; Entrepreneurs and aspirants alike.

About the Author – Himanshu Chanda is a HeadStart volunteer and manages a business blog of his own.

 A special thanks to Atul Seksaria for coming up with the idea and helping us reach out to the CleanTech community

NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of maps, traffic, location data enabling navigation, and location-based services; held their first developer days in India. The intention of these day long programs was to share valuable information about the about the global opportunity for location-based applications and how developers can quickly apply their skills toward creating the most compelling location-based apps. There was a business as well as a developer angle to the events with Opportunities, Trends, Algorithms, APIs being discussed in plenty.

The events were held in Bengaluru (Bangalore) on April 26th and Delhi on April 29th. Developers were provided high speed internet access if they wished to do some live coding (and many of them did). Both the events were streamed live as well. The agenda was similar in both the cities.

Rajat Tandon, Director, India Sales, NAVTEQ – spoke on Trends and Opportunities in the LBS space. He shared statistics on the evolution and growth of LBS and APAC as a market besides giving an overview of NAVTEQ’s offerings. The top trends as pointed out by Tarun are:-
App Stores, TBT apps, Location Based Social Networks, Location Point Advertising (LPA), Probes, Connected Cars, Embedded Low cost Navigation devices.

Marc Naddell, VP, Partner and Developer Programs, NAVTEQ – shared useful information on how the NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) can assist developers every step of the way, from the initial stage of building LBS apps straight through to helping them with business development and marketing. Marc was full of facts and anecdotes. He spoke about a pilot with a leading pizza brand in India where they achieved a clickthru rate of as high as 4% using LPA.

Tarun Harnathka, Director, India Product Management, NAVTEQ – gave an overview of their products and shared what happens behind the scenes to create the magic that was seen in a video demonstrating the capabilities of their products. He spoke about innovation in Indoor Mapping, Advertising, Pedestrian tracks and more.

Michael Moore in Bengaluru and Abhijit Deshpande in Delhi, Technical Consultants, NAVTEQ – introduced the participants to the functional aspects of building location based software. They spoke on the finer aspects of Routing, Geocoding and Imaging.

Entrepreneurs – Shaheer Ahmed of Location Guru and Venkateswaran Kasirajan of Spime – Shared about their journey into the LBS space acquainting users with the subtle nuances of building LBS applications in India.

But the man who really stole the show in both cities was – Steven Citron-Pousty, Technical Evangelist, deCarta! Steve took hands on coding sessions in Delhi and not so hands on session in Bengaluru. He gave an introduction to deCarta’s Android, HTML5, iPhone and Samsung Bada APIs. “Steve is a full-time showman…tech clubbed with antics and a good control over what he says – true rockstar” tweeted one of the participants in Delhi.

To complete this information-packed day, there was a panel discussion on ‘Trends and Future App Opportunities in LBS-3G and Beyond’. A panel of industry experts shared their perspectives on the topic and a wealth of insights were shared on consumer vs enterprise applications, adoption, government policies, privacy, monetization and much more.

The panel in Bengaluru comprised of Indus Khaitan – VP Bitzer Mobile (Moderator); Shekhar Kirani – Venture Partner, Accel Partners; Marc Naddell – NAVTEQ; Shaheer Ahmed – CEO, Location Guru; Karthik Srinivasan, DGM Partner Relations, Vodaphone; and Parag Dhol, Director, Inventus Capital Partners.

The Delhi panel was moderated by Prashant Singh, Product Manager, Spice Labs & Co-founder MoMo Delhi; Maniesh Kulshrestha, Country Manager BD and Sales SiRF Technology; Mukul Singhal, VP at SAIF Partners; Yogesh Bijlani, Country Head and GM APAC at Telinity along with Marc and Shaheer.

Overall the events were very well received by the audience. Over 110 participants attended the Bengaluru event and more than 70 in Delhi. Close to a hundred unique viewers watched over 45 hours of video on the live stream. Hundreds of tweets proliferated the social network and the feedback from attendees was very encouraging.

Last but not the least there were three awesome give-aways for the participants – An iPad2 sponsored by NAVTEQ, a Samsung Galaxy Tablet sponsored by deCarta and a Sony Playstation Portable sponsored by HeadStart! Three lucky winners from both cities had a big reason to go back home smiling.

NAVTEQ and HeadStart thank our local ecosystem and media partners OCC Bangalore, MoMo Delhi, Only Gizmos and Your Story for their support in making these events a smashing success.

To summarise, location is going to be ubiquitous and right now is the best time to get into the location bandwagon.

For any information regarding the events you may contact NAVTEQDevDay[at]navteq.com. If you want to be kept posted for similar upcoming events please follow @NN4D.

You can also get access to the presentations here.

Some Pics from Bangalore and Delhi.