The February edition of Startup Saturday had the usual vigour and zealous participation from the city’s budding entrepreneurs.

Several aspiring and newbie entrepreneurs were around, in anticipation of figuring out how they could acquire their first set of customers.

Ujwal Trivedi of Headstart hosted the session. Here is a quick roundup of sessions during the course of the event:

1. DEMO – StoreWalk App by Labdesk Inc. – AK Verma
-connects brick-and-mortar stores to the internet.
– maintain live inventory of stores
The audience had a lot of questions and suggestions to offer – they were also speed mentored by Amit Singh and Sivaguru, both senior volunteers at Headstart Network.
Do check out their app in the app store and give them feedback!

2. TALK on Customer Acquisition – Deep Sherchan, Simplify360

In a very engaging narrative, Deep shared his experiences of pivoting his idea based on how the customer response was to each of his products. He explained how he scrapped all his earlier products, leveraged the same user base to use his new product Simplify360. Here are a few key takeaways from his session:
a. Talk to people, get them use the product/service, understand pain points.
b. Stick to one idea and try making it better than working on too many ideas simultaneously.
c. Having a mentor is very helpful. But remember that you have to walk the path yourself.
d. Do not wait for someone to give you that one little push. It will never happen. You will have to push yourself forward.
e. Be active on social media and stay well connected.
f. Content is key.
According to him, what helps acquire genuine customers/users arethe following:
a. Communicating value of your product/service
b. Partnerships
c. Customer recommendations and case studies
d. Trust from the media/industry
You can reach out to Deep on twitter @bexdeep.

3. TALK – PratyushPrasanna, Paytm

Pratyush traced his journey with Paytm and cited examples from his own experiences.
He had a few key things to tell the audience:
a. Get talked about!
b. Reaching out to people is very important.
c. Keep experimenting.
The audience had a number of questions for him regarding his paytm experience and he answered it all patiently.

4. DEMO – Dubroo – KiranPatil

Dubroo is an online dubbing platform for youtube videos. It aims to crowd source creation of regional language versions of videos. The team thinks the product will benefit students, farmers, karaoke enthusiasts, dubbing artists etc. who want to create their own videos.
The audience unanimously gave a thumbs up to the idea and suggestions poured in to make the product better! Go and check out Dubroohere -dubroo.com

5. PANEL DISCUSSION

The last session for the day was a panel discussion on customer acquisition, moderated by RohithVeerajappa of WowLabz. The panel comprised of Joby Joseph of FreshersWorld, Deep Sherchan of simplify360, GauravMunjal of FlatChat and Aditya Bandi of Bookpad.

Rohith did an excellent job at moderating the session – he prompted each panelist to share experiences of acquiring customers for their own ventures. He brought in the topic of marketing and how important marketing is to acquiring users. The conversation also touched upon customer acquisition in case of Mobile apps. As a fitting finale, each of the panellists shared some interesting growth hacks that they had come across in their entrepreneurial journey.

Here is a list of books recommended by the panelists:( Joby emphasized the importance of reading the stories of other entrepreneurs and Aditya mentioned his interest in following relevant blogs)

1. Choose Yourself – James Altucher
2. Zero to One – Peter Thiel
3. Dreaming in code – Scott Rosenberg
4. The Innovator’s Dilemma – Clayton M. Christensen
5. The AlChemist – Paulo Coelho

Post sessions, the floor was open to networking.

The next StartupStaturday will be on 14th March 2015. For more info, please do write to us at bangalore@headstart.in.

Write up by:

Malini Gowrishankar

Founder, F5escapes and volunteer at Headstart Bangalore