By Malini Gowrishankar
(This is a post that I penned for the Headstart Network, a pan India entrepreneurship network for which I've recently started writing/volunteering. To know more about Headstart, click
here. Hope to see more such posts in the future!)
It wasn't yet another lazy Saturday morning, at least for a
bunch of us. It was a jumpstart Saturday. The reason? Startup Saturday was back
in town! Thanks to Yahoo, we had a wonderful space for the event this time too
- The Yahoo office at Bagmane Tech Park,
CV Raman Nagar. The audience turnout reflected this edition's theme -
'Building your Startup', with more than half of them having just started or
aspiring to start their own business ventures soon, which in turn meant that
quite a few were attending the event for the first time. Though the turnout was
lesser than usual, it was an eclectic mix, which ensured a great session.
The event commenced with Prashant of Headstart giving the
audience an introduction to Startup Saturday and to Nasscom 10000
Startups. This was followed by the first
scheduled talk of the day by Mr. Chetan Kulkarni, Founder and CEO at Vizury. True to the theme, Mr. Chetan spoke about how
Vizury was built, tracing along the timeline, the milestones of the company
with respect to funding, customer acquisition and expansion. He also spoke about the background of the
co-founders and the common thread that brought them together. The talk was
peppered with some interesting anecdotes, the most notable one being the
incident that marked the beginning of their China operations. The talk ended
with an interesting Q& A with Mr. Chetan and not surprisingly, the
questions revolved around starting-up itself.
Before the second speaker of the day was ushered in,
Prashant brought in a whiff of social entrepreneurship to the event, by
familiarizing the audience to ‘Jagriti Yatra’ -
the incredible train journey for entrepreneurs and aspiring
entrepreneurs organized by Jagriti Sewa Sansthan. The fact that we had two
‘Yatris’ amongst us added to the credibility of the intro.
Next on stage was Ranjan Kumar of Oye Party.com. This
session was a product demo ; Ranjan walked us through the various features and
differentiating aspects of OyeParty. He also shared the current setup and the
future direction for OyeParty. We must say he did a good job convincing the
audience and taking on their bashing, as majority opined at the end of the demo
that the venture would be a hit! Here’s Headstart wishing you goodluck with
OyeParty, Ranjan!
The second talk of the day was delivered by Mr. Naren NS, Co-founder
and Global Head for Banking and BI solutions at Icreate.in. He took the audience on a time-travel,
allowing them to have a peek into his career trajectory. Tracing back right
from his college days, working on a core banking solution as a techie, starting
up, getting that elusive first customer etc. to growing and expanding his
business overseas, he covered it all. He also briefly described the company’s
transition from being a services provider to providing product based solutions
and the challenges associated with the same. Overall, it was a well-received
talk with a lot of interesting questions thrown in by the inquisitive audience.
The final offering for the day was a ‘Spark the rise’ pitch
by Ihitashri Shandilya of Mithilasmita. A nominee of Mahindra’s ‘Spark the
rise’ campaign, Ihitashri emphasized the importance of supporting our local art
and culture. She spoke in brief about her replicable business model for
promoting art, with the model currently being applied to something that she
grew up with and is very close to her heart – Madhubani paintings from the
Indian heartland.
With that truly inspirational pitch and the networking time
that ensued, that day’s event drew to a close. However, for each one of us
there, it was just the beginning, for the spark to be rekindled, the beliefs to
be reinforced, the ideas to be evaluated, yet another time.
