The North Pagola at the IIMB campus witnessed the first anniversary edition of Startup Saturday , this Saturday, 14 Feb '09. It has been one year at Bangalore, since the first 'official' Startup Saturday graduated from being a get-together of startup-bug-affected-techies to a meeting point of entrepreneurs, investors, freelancers and media persona. This occasion had three Startups showcasing themselves in a big-but-still-over-packed room. This was the highest ever turn up of folks for such an event, say Kunal and Amit Singh, who have been with this event since its very inception. A huge cake-cutting ceremony was arranged during the tea-break to mark the occasion, which had folks such as Keshav Reddy and Kallol Borah, the founding members of Headstart.in and StartupSaturday.in .
Kreeo.com CEO, Sumeet Anand , did a wonderful presentation studded with videos of folks around the world commenting on the concept of 'Collective Intelligence', and the pace at which the total digitized knowledge of the world is growing. He brought out the need for a holistic way knowledge management, which includes and goes beyond the conventional ways of Google-ing and Wiki searches. It is something that is completely built up on Open Standards, using ajax alone. It gives you more than a combination of Wikipedia, Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Flicker and more! It introduces a novel concept called the BOK framework, or the 'Body of Knowledge' framework. Sumeet gave the example of someone doing a Google search to find out a needle from a haystack and once the search is done, the needle is back in the haystack - the reason being that the next user has to put in the same or more effort in locating the same information from the ocean of information that the Internet is, as of today. There is no evolution that really happens in such a case. The knowledge in Wikipedia also does not improve after a point, once a few folks have done the page. It only gets updated in bits and pieces and the policing of quality too is something that is of concern. Kreeo.com comes with a solution that has answers to all of these and some more situations as well. It is an easy-to-use interface in which the needle is not re-searched in the haystack, again and again! Once a relevant piece of information is gathered, it is marked by the user to a BOK, and has comments, examples, best-practices, Q&A, and even relevant videos for the set of info. All this is done by different users all over the world and Kreeo promises of a high level of quality standards in this. Kreeo distinguishes between users and customers. For Kreeo, the customer is one from an enterprise and who pays for the services it gets. It is amazingly useful for companies who struggle internally for a standardized system that helps them manage knowledge, without having the risk of leaking proprietary info to the outside world.
'Change is the norm' is different from the statement 'Change is the only constant'. In the latter case, we have to accept change as something we cannot prevent in any case, and as something that 'has to' happen. In the former case, when we consider change as a norm, we have a more proactive approach, says Sumeet. We drive the change we want to see in the world, and we are the creators of the newest things in the future. If change 'has to' happen, why not have it our way!. Sumeet gave an understanding that the next decade is going to see a new spelling of the word new - it being spelled as n-i-w, n for nano, i for intelligent, and w for wireless. These are the three technological pillars that are going to sustain the fundamental developments in the near future.
The discussion was interspersed with numerous questions shot by the audience and it added to the liveliness of the session. There were many questions which challenged the very concept of going away from Google and Wiki and it was interesting to see people take exception as well as accept, a very new concept in front of them.
There was a talk by Raj Dutta from MindTree , which had to be canceled at the eleventh hour due to Raj's ill-health. But this was replaced by two more Startups pitching in: Movie Shoovie and TringMe .
Movie Shoovie presented the concept of showcasing memorable Indian movies, with high residual value, to the NRI audience. Jyoti, an ex-Stanford and ex-Yahoo and a string of other names to her experience list, made the presentation truly engaging by asking the audience about their favorite movies and why they have been their favorite since ages. She charted out the plan to keep producers/distributors and the consumers happy with live streaming of selected movies (with a download/streaming validity option of a week). They focus only on Indian movies, shun piracy, and increase the viewing audience of older movies. They look forward to project Indian movies of all the regional languages, subtitled and ultimately create a strong emotional community of movie lovers all over the world.
TringMe is VoicePHP at is very best. A presenter at many of the recent Startup ecosystem events, TringMe engage the audience all the more by live demos of their technology and wished "Happy Birthday Headstart Startup Saturday ..." to the whole audience! Though the session by TringMe swung between techie-talk to heated defense arguments by existing XML lovers, it was something that showed a new paradigm of Voice related technologies over the Internet and the mobile space. In TringMe CEO, Yusuf Motiwala's words, "Our basic intention has been to enable VoIP without the need to download anything. The click-to-call capability fits within our overall solution accordingly. Suppose you don't have access to your laptop and you need to call from some place where you have just plain old Internet connection. With our solution you can make the calls without downloading anything. The VoIP capability is enabled by a web integrated dialer."
The audience compromised of newbie entrepreneurs, weekend-entrepreneurs, students, techies, HR consultants, media professionals, and established entrepreneurs, including Anurakt Jain, from the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson India. Apart from specific questions, the three presenting companies candidly answered audience queries on startup hiccups, bootstrapping issues, legal, financial, market reach and IP hurdles. NSRCEL , IIMB which hosted the event, gave a small talk on the incubation facilities available to budding startups.
Startup Saturday coincided with Valentine's Day celebrations and it was during the tea-breaks and other unscheduled breaks taken by the audience, when everybody engaged themselves with networking and you could see remarkable hustle-bustle within the audience. The regular Startup Saturday attendees and the new folks (which by far outnumbered the oldies!) mingled with coffee, tea and cookies. Sumeet Anand from Kreeo was joined by Kallol, Keshav, Sujay, and Kunal to cut the Birthday cake and it was a treat in all senses to be a part of the event this weekend. The organizing of this event has graduated from being a 'i-have-time-and-will-contribute' one to one which is driven by a team of more than ten volunteers, each handling a different function. You had one to look at the logistics part of it, while one to run and get the media folks and arrange for the posters. Thanks to the team at IIMB for the room and all other critical arrangements, for, on a lighter note, what is networking without snacks and beverages and a place to hang around!
