Startup Saturday Hyderabad, March 2011

(A first person account by Ramesh Loganathan, our champion in Hyderabad)

After opening comments, introducing the theme and the program for the day, I invited the first speaker from Hyderabad Angels- Murali, an angel investor with Hyderabad Angels and also Founder of MandavaSuites (and a serial entrepreneur, earlier avatars in tech world).

Murali shared an investor viewpoint in terms of what attributes makes good co-founders. From his experiences as a serial entrepreneur and also presently as an angel investor. Good discussion followed the talk.

Then had Deepsh, founder of MoveinSync (an ISB incubated startup). Deepesh talked about how he got his co-founder who happened to be a long time friend and who also started entrepreneurial path around the same time with a different venture. And after a year since each of the two started, they decided to merge the startups and focus their energies jointly that has panned out very well for them now.

We had an unscheduled talk (I bounced into him at the start of the event and requested him to speak. As he was a seasoned entrepreneur and now has next venture-a good startup that he has been working on for over a year now). Amardeep, founder of Milk or water. A startup that is in the retail investing space. He actually came to the event with his co-founder. Talked a little bit about their venture that is bringing algorithmic trading to retail investors based on few unique approaches as ‘rating the analysts’. Come with a strong foundation in capital markets space and is also a serial entrepreneur. Good talk & lightning pitch about a very serious venture from seasoned entrepreneurs.

Then we had 4 startups pitching about themselves, their startup, biz plans and what they are looking for in a co-founder and why:
·         Ramu Kallepalli, TravelSpice
·         Prakhar Agrawal, BuyAlert.com
·         Anshuman sinha, EduTechnik
·         Harsha mukherjee. Ekjaa.. A social venture incubated at iiit

And one lightning pitch at end:
Ankur, social networking site- sweatso.com (sports related or NGOs or corporates(for sports/gym engaged in by each employee- sweat-equity or calori-credits and make corporates donate to NGOs based on these)

Abt 10 interested co-founders were thr. At networking. Most people stayed timm almost 3 though talks got over at 2pm.

Content and photos by: Ramesh Loganathan