There was excitement, enthusiasm, and a sense of thrill, which created a vibrancy of its own kind all over the venue. The place was packed with passionate entrepreneurs, innovative products, and an awestruck audience. The event looked like a mini Silicon Valley with over 80 startups, 5,000 tech enthusiasts, and 40 investors participating in it. The second edition of Startup City by SiliconIndia on June 6, 2009 was a blend of passion, enthusiasm, and opportunity.

Ajit Balakrishnan, Co-founder and CEO of Rediff.com and Sanjeev Bikhchandani, Founder and CEO of Naukri.com set the ball rolling for the entrepreneurs’ day to remember.
Bikhchandani shared his journey of building Naukri, which was launched in 1997 and now one of the top job portals in India that was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange in 2006. “Know your customers, solve an unsolved problem, be an early mover, be frugal with your cost, and don’t get into a business just for making money. Alongside, you need to be persistent when you are an entrepreneur,” revealed the Naukri head.

On the other hand, Balakrishnan gave the audience a glimpse into his past, when he was building UNIX boxes in Bangalore. Drawing from the rich experience he has gained from running his own portal that is today the fifth most visited site in India, Balakrishnan said, “Businesses have to keep reinventing themselves.” He also shared about how Rediff was founded in the era of text browsers. It was stunning to hear that its early days, they had no interest in making money. However, over a period of time, Rediff evolved with the evolution of the web, with the introduction of graphical browsers, Javascript and DOM, Object oriented programming and O/R mapping.

Sanjay Nayak, MD and CEO of Tejas Networks talked about the marketing aspects and said, “When you have a good solution for the domestic market, a lot of partnerships will open up at the world level.” He also elaborated on the opportunities in the Indian ecosystem for a product company. He exemplified the importance of having a good presence in the Indian market when he added, “Win in India, you can win the world.”

Mukesh Prasad Singh, General Manager of Amazon India explained about the cost benefits of using the ‘cloud’ in a technology startup and gave a sneak peak into Kindle, the latest reading device and its unique features. This pioneer of cloud computing took the opportunity to enlighten the spellbound audience on the latest buzzword in computing. Sun Microsystems’ General Manager Bakshish Dutta elaborated on the Startup Essentials Program by Sun, which has been helping in the growth of several startups around the world. When Prakash Sayini, Head of Forum Nokia gave an insight into the sea of opportunities available in the mobile Internet space, the crowd listened with rapt attention. Sayini insisted upon an ecosystem with a wide range of service providers for mobile Internet.