What do you usually do on a Saturday morning, especially if you are an entrepreneur or a budding one? Well apart from work there is plenty of networking to be done which helps build up stature in the ecosystem.
Birds of a feather flock together and that’s what happened at the Startup Saturday session on 13th of Dec. Despite being a weekend it was a packed house at the NCL Venture Center at the session which was organized by HEADSTART Network Foundation. Startup Saturday takes place of 2nd SAT of every month to serve the purpose of bringing seasoned and budding entrepreneurs together. Along with Pune, Startup Saturday was being organized in 12 other cities on the same day! #SSPUNE was enthusiastically hosted by Arti Agarwal, who manages the Startup Community across India for Headstart.
The Agenda for this month’s #SSPUNE was the introduction of 3 ventures by their respective founders and pitches by them. Each pitch was followed by a brief Q & A which helped the audience to know more about the venture as well as future plans of these ventures. The program began sharp at 10 am and ended up 1pm and it was heartening to see timeline being followed to a T thanks to delegation of work to a volunteer for time keeping.
We had an hour of introductions starting from Arti who told us about HEADSTART Network foundation and history of Startup Saturday initiative followed by introductions from members of audience. Also a short video showing a pitch from the founder of Twoodo was shown which gave the audience an idea about how to pitch in front of VC’s among others.
The next 2 hours contained pitching by 4 firms namely. COFFEETABLE, Pakumania, MedsOnWay , JLC (In ideation phase)
a) TheCoffeeTable’ enables real-time video communication on websites. This was explained in the form of a brief PPT but more explanation was verbal. The Q & A was quite engaging with some experienced entrepreneurs dissecting every aspect of the venture.
b) Next was pitch by Pakumania.com who’s founder Vaibhav Shrivastava among others explained the venture to the audience. It was exciting for the audience to hear that the purpose was to source sweets among other famous edible items from the place of origin and provide delivery to people. Seems another exciting E-Com venture although they admitted logistical & financial challenges were far too many. But nevertheless they seemed enthusiastic about it and that it what matters to an entrepreneur. Although there was supposed to be a break but that was gobbled up due to the extended Q & A session after the pitch.
c) MedsOnWay founder Aniket Bora made a presentation next. Its another E-commerce site but unlike others deal with sourcing & delivery of medicines. Aniket explained to the audience difference between high branded as well as their generic alternatives which was an eye opener for many. He had very clear idea about the logistics and other challenges involed as well as the medical authenticity of the solutions provided. If there was a real VC sitting in the audience they would have certainly a great chance of being called for further talks.
d) The last pitch was made by Abhigyaan who a venure JustLegalCell whose app JLC would be released sometime in the near future. Although he is still a student in a law college his pitch indicated he had a clear idea about what legal services are required by people from various walks of life and how he planned to provide it. Very enthusiastic presentation as well as good clarity displayed on all aspects of the venture.
Through the session Arti always made it a point to ask the audience their expectation from the present & future sessions. Also members of the audience came up with suggestions for future sessions and some of them volunteered to join the team.
It was great to see such energy flowing and the response indicated the future session would be even better.
Write up by,
Who attended #SSPUNE for the first time and readily accepted to volunteer! 🙂
Is an IT Consultant (Software, Hardware & Networking), Technical Content Writer, Book Reviewer, Social Media & Promotions @PILF (Pune International Literary Festival).