Startup City: A Platform for Budding Entrepreneurs Date:   Tuesday , July 06, 2010 Starting a company is all about the relentless effort and optimism, and risk-taking is a key element in building a company. One has to be clear about one’s strength, and shouldn’t try to do everything single handedly. This becomes a core learning for any startup and the whole SiliconIndia Startup City environment turned a small city of innovation, where all the 95 startups tried to showcase their strengths through the demonstration of their own products. The event became a platform for these budding entrepreneurs to show their enthusiasm and commitment towards their new ventures. It also became a learning ground for all the 2,000 odd participants who took the opportunity to witness these budding innovators encouraging each other to turn their entrepreneurial dream into reality. The willingness to go the extra mile in the industry is the best characteristic of a real entrepreneur. Through Startup City, SiliconIndia provided a platform for the budding entrepreneurs to get lessons from the industry leaders’ lives who have already established their firms. It provided the participants with an opportunity to experience the culture of innovation in small companies. In addition, the participants got a chance to listen to visionary keynotes and in-depth panel discussions that lend a hand to the promising entrepreneurs to take confident steps towards realizing their dreams. “Out of 50 ideas only one becomes a business,” says Krishnakumar Natarajan, Co-founder, CEO, and Managing Director of MindTree. His words explain a lot about the risks that are involved in building firms that can challenge the tech biggies. While sharing his MindTree experiences in the jam packed auditorium, Natarajan confirmed his belief in the potentials of mid size organizations. The MindTree leader believes that these budding entrepreneurs who are coming up with leapfrog innovations with an aim to become industry leaders of tomorrow could raise a challenge to the tech biggies. By grasping the insights of the MindTree leader, the growing entrepreneurs could lay their hands on the life of industry leaders that gave them the glimpses of struggles involved in entrepreneurialism. Innovation is the core of firms to create challenges to the bigger firms that struggle to continue growth. The insights of Ajit Balakrishnan, Founder and CEO of Rediff.com, were well articulated in his address on “Nurturing the Indian Innovation System.” He encouraged the budding leaders to explore innovation and to turn out to be the leaders of the different sectors of the wide spread technology industry. In his opinion ‘every innovation has its origin some where in the society’. “If the entrepreneurs want to build a successful product story, they have to make it the best and not the cheapest,” says Bharat Goenka from his own industry experience. According to this leader of Tally Solutions, entrepreneurs always have two choices. They can make changes happen and enjoy the process of directing it or resist the changes and suffer when it becomes a reality. As idea selection plays a key role in the success of the startups, sufficient care should be taken before laying the foundation for one’s million dollar dream. According to Srini Rajam, Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Ittiam, the entrepreneur should analyze the needs of market and should develop his or her idea on the basis of market needs for the long term success. Depending on the complexity of the product it will take some time to reach the market. The Ittiam leader was pleased about the entrepreneurs who prefer to work on a challenging idea. In the process of making their idea into a reality the scarcity of sufficient funds always create hurdles to the entrepreneurs. Usually, they won’t get even a chance to meet with the venture capitalists (VCs). Founders and chief executives of the startups that took the opportunity to meet with the top venture capitalists here were able to make a pitch for investments. In this event, VCs gave an overview of the areas of investment and what they are looking for in startup companies. Attendees were so pleased that they were able to lay down their hands on best of the breed solutions. VCs from the established firms like SVB India Advisors, Headstart Ventures, Helion Ventures, and Stega Capital were excited to learn about the innovations and strategies of the budding entrepreneurs. After gaining knowledge from the industry leaders and understanding the huge opportunity lying in the market, the budding entrepreneurs geared up for a competitive mood. It was time for them to flex their muscles to warn the corporate biggies that they ought to be counted upon, and in the process grabbing some awards at the SiliconIndia Startup City elevator pitch competition. Through a mere two minute presentation, these entrepreneurs vied for the attention of investors and prospective customers. Each of the performances were evaluated by an expert panel of judges, which comprised of highly experienced VCs and the best startups across the five segments including the Internet, services, education, products, and mobile were honored in the two day event. Awards were given based on the criteria like the company overview, market opportunity, the team composition, solution value proposition, competitive positioning, growth plans, go-to-market plan, current status, and investment opportunity. VidTeq, a Bangalore based startup that provides video maps for Bangalore city bagged the best startup award in the Internet segment. LeadForce, a provider of next generation marketing automation, dubbed as Marketing Automation 2.0, secured the best startup award in the product sector. E-learning solutions provider Edujini Labs won the best startup in Education. Prakat Solutions, a technology solutions company specializing in cloud computing, virtualization, independent testing, and open source technologies bagged the best startup award in the services segment. 160by2, which allows the users to send free SMS to cell phones across India, emerged as the best startup in the mobile segment. Also, SiliconIndia provided a platform named CEO Conclave for the CEOs and Managing Directors of technology companies that facilitated an informal discussion among the senior management about the best practices in building technology companies in India, what works, what doesn’t work, the potentials, pitfalls, and other challenges. Clas Neumann, SVP at SAP AG and Head, Global SAP Labs Network at SAP, Thomas Abraham, Managing Director, Sage India, and Anand Deshpande, Founder, Chairman and Managing Director of Persistent Systems, were excited to discuss with the budding entrepreneurs about the best practices in building technology companies from India. Sunil Rao, Head of Forum Nokia India gave an insight to the participants regarding the vast opportunities for mobile entrepreneurs in the country. The conclave motivated the crowd to explore the opportunities and to become the industry leaders of tomorrow. At the end of the two days the participants left with smiles, as they were quite happy of the different opportunities that the platform provided them. Aneesh Ahamed, Vice President of Libra Interactive, exclaims, “We had been looking for tie ups, and now in the SiliconIndia event we have received proposals for eight tie ups.” In a similar tone Shafi Ahamed, the CEO of Sapphire IMS, asserts that he has finally found in this SiliconIndia platform the people whom he was trying to connect with since last six months. About 2,000 technology enthusiasts walked into the event with lots of hope and they took home some invaluable lessons from the industry leaders.