Yadukrishnan S, commonly called Yadu, is one of our rocking volunteers in Kochi, who has been contributing to the Startup Ecosystem there since a year. He has been helping Mr. Remesh Kurupath, our Kochi Lead Headstarter, to run Startup Saturday Kochi Edition. Yadu hosted Startup Saturday in Kochi on May 10th this year and unlike always, this was his first one as a Lead!
Here how he puts across his experiences before us!
“My first startup saturday as lead:
Myself Yadukrishnan S, a student entrepreneur from Kochi. I’m Founder CEO for Kalypzo. I’m one of the few volunteers at Startup Saturday Kochi. I have been a part of SS Kochi for one year. Since then I have been doing various roles such as content creator, photographer, anchor, blogger, marketing and the list goes on. It’s been a great experience and learning for me so far. I used to be moderately active in startup saturday. Two things that happened recently changed my whole perspective about startup saturday. Last December Mr. Prasant Sharma from SS Bangalore came to speak at our event, which completely changed the way I thought about startup saturday . And the second one was when I happened to be in Bangalore last February for an interview the same time Startup Saturday was happening. Since I missed Kochi edition I thought why not attend Bangalore one. It was game changing for me. I found out things were done entirely different and awesome way there. I found many cool things done there which can be done in my city too.
Days passed, I was towards my last days in college when suddenly Mr. Remesh Kurupath, my city lead, called me one day and asked if I’m interested in leading Startup Saturday May . I had my exams till end of the month. Since it was a dream come true for me, I didnt want to miss the opportunity. Remesh introduced me to Mrs. Arti Agarwal, one who looks after all Startup Saturdays, guided me through the whole process . First task was to fix the theme. After some discussions, we came up with student entrepreneurship as the theme. We expected lot of students to turn up, being holiday time. Then I began speaker hunting. After a rigorous search and rejections, we at last found the speakers, panel and product for demos. We had Mr. Abin Jose Tom, CEO, Webandcrafts, very promising startup from Kerala who doing very good in Web service industry. He is one of the early student entrepreneurs from Kerala. Then we had Mr. Abhilash Chandran from Xerox to speak on Lean startup practices. Since the theme was student entrepreneurship I had made it a point to have everything student based. Hence we had 2 student startups doing for product demonstration. One of them was an app called Shop on lady, a gps based fashion app by Addictive innovations headed by Mr. Anthony Pathadan who started up from college. Then we had Intelligent gear transmission, by Bisko labs, a patent pending technology which recently got funded and headed by Mr. Alfred John, a prefinal year engineering student. For panel discussion apart from Abin and Abhilash we had Mr. Pranav Kumar, COO, Startup village, an IIM-C alumnus and also had cofounded Mobme in the panel and Mr. Jofin Joseph, COO, Profoundis played the role of moderator. Both of them had started up in their college days. Now came the most tricky part of the event, marketing the event. We made an awesome poster for the event thanks to Hemanth, my fellow volunteer. We shared the posters and content as much as we could. And at last the d-day arrived. We had around 60 people attending, most of them being students which meant marketing worked.
As per the custom we started off with an introduction to Startup saturday to the new attendees . It was the first time I was playing the host and was a bit nervous. But it went well. Then I passed the stage to Mr. Abin. He is a man of his own. He had a very unique vision and a calculated method to achieve. It was a very thought provocative session. The session by Mr. Abhilash was also a very interesting for the audience who had never heard of lean methodology. We had teams from Shoponlady and Bisko labs presenting their idea to the crowd. They got many appreciation and suggestions from crowd. Next we had panel discussion. Mr. Jofin who played the moderator started of the discussion by raising some standard issues with the panel. And each one of the panel started sharing their thoughts. And atlast Mr. Pranav’s turn came. He took the crowd away instantly with his talk. The pure enthusiasm and charisma with which he talked and answered them left the students stunned. This was followed by questions from audience. Panel discussion turned out to be one of the best. All thanks to Jofin for moderating the discussion well. Since in kochi, we are not charging the audience nor having any sponsor we were very low on budget and not in a position to felicitate the speakers . Thanks to Arti, who suggested the idea for giving plant sapling and it worked well . Hence we have made it our official memento of Startup Saturday kochi from now on . After that we had a lot of networking going on.
The event turned out to be a huge success. We even had students from Karnataka attending the event. We got excellent feedback from speakers and audience. Hoping to carry forward the momentum in the coming months . I would like to thank some without whom this couldn’t be done. First and foremost Mr. Remesh Kurupath, for giving me the opportunity and believing in me. Then Mrs. Arti Agarwal who help me throughout right from the start. I would also like to thank Pranav, Abin, Abhilash, Jofin for hearing me out and speaking at the event. I would also like to add the support from my fellow volunteers Ajith George , Arjun Pillai, Jinu Kumar and Hemanth. Also to Startup village especially George, Tojo and Shahjahan for helping me out with venue also Daniel for posting about the event in Sv blog and Cat entertainments for capturing the event .
Startup Saturday has given me more than what I have given back. If I’m something today on the entrepreneur side, i owe a big part of it to Startup saturday. I had the chance to meet and interact with a lot of industry experts and successful entrepreneurs. Also it has helped me a lot with my management and soft skills. It’s a great feeling to be a part of headstart network. Proud to be a headstarter. To all my fellow entrepreneurs and student friends, if you can spare some time every second saturday of every month either attend the event or be a part of the team in your city. It’s definitely worth it..”
Congratulations for giving your helping hand to Headstart to live its mission “Changing The World Through Entrepreneuship” 🙂
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