Startup Saturday Pune for February was our biggest ever in the city. The event saw speakers from IndicThreads, Millenium School/ myEshala, NextLeap, Synthesis Solutions & kPoint.It started with Harshad Oak of IndicThreads (http://www.indicthreads.com). IndicThreads organizes tech conferences such as java, cloud computing, mobile computing, etc. As of now it is only within Pune but in long run they want to spread all across India. These conferences are paid and the overall response is good. Harshad used to work for Cognizant before he started (along with his wife) IndicThreads. He is basically a Java guy and got some renowned certifications. He also authored a Java book. While sharing his entrepreneurial journey, he mentioned that writing a book on Java helped him a lot starting his venture.
The lesson here: do something & participate in various things so that people start recognizing you.
Next up was a presentation was from Nikhil Karkare of Millenium School. He talked about the concept of ‘no school bags’ for children of Millenium School. It is a day boarding, state board school where kid gets almost everything within the school campus. Kids don’t take any school bags to school. They give books/ copies within the school and kids practice it. He mentioned that since the concept of no school bag was new, initially they faced some difficulty convincing the crowd. A related query arised, “how do parents know what their kids are doing in the school?”. They daily send sheets of whatever their kids have done during the day. He also talked about their learning tool called myEshala (http://www.myeshala.in/) where they provide video CD to parents for the syllabus and child can practice it at home as well.
The thurd presentation was from Suruchi Wagh of NextLeap (http://www.yournextleap.com/). NextLeap is a recommendation engine for students seeking admission in American universities. They work on a freemium model where they suggest three universities free of cost. They have two other accounts called economy & advanced where they suggest more universities and support on phone as well. They have three guys on advisory board and Alok Kejriwal of Games2Win/ Mobile2Win/ Contest2Win is one of them.
The fourth presentation was from Swapnil Patil of Synthesis Solutions (http://www.synthesys.co.in/). Swapnil talked about his new venture in education field called GetAdmission.in. Last presentation was from Avijit of kPoint (http://www.kpoint.in). kPoint is a product of GSLab (a soft dev comp). It is a cloud-based solution for multimedia learning and sharing in fast moving organizations. kPoint enables easy capture of expert knowledge into multimedia capsules, which provide searchable video and flexible navigation of content for informal learning. kPoint effectively overcomes the barrier for creating and sharing content.
With that we came to an end of the event and then participants networked with each other over cold-drink and snacks. It was a successful event with around 80-90 participants. Next meet will focus on how to take your idea/ product into the market. If you want to attend Startup Saturday in your city – Head here!
Post by Vishwa Vivek Garg