Meeting Online this Saturday @3PM

Hi Everyone,

Compared to how things were a few years back, the Startup Community has come together in such a fabulous way. We have OpenCoffee Club meets, Startup Lunches, Startup Saturdays, Mobile Mondays, Barcamps, Ideacamps etc, etc, and the plethora of other activities that organizations such as TiE, NEN, NASSCOM, etc are providing to benefit this same target audience.

All that said, we understand that most of these benefits are enjoyed by those who live in the major cities, and in most cases in the cities down south. There hasnt been much activities going on in cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad or any where in Kerala to bring the community together and to share, ask questions, and receive support from one another.

In an attempt to bridge that, we are hosting an online meet this Saturday at 3pm at http://chat.proto.in. Most of you would know how to login, and the process is quite simple. Visit the URL, enter a nickname and you could join in.

If you would be participating, do send a reply to this mail, and feel free to ask any questions if you do have any. You are also more than welcome to invite your friends, should they be interested, and ask them to join.

I look forward to seeing you there this weekend.

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admin, April 30th 2008 | Posted in india, proto, proto.in, proto2008se, startups

Vote: Who Would You like to Hear From?

In the two days that make up for the Proto.in fun, the first day is essentially the Fastrack Startup School Sessions that make up for most of the excitement – while the presenters for the second day run their final rehearsals on stage and are getting torn into bits and pieces by mentors who are essentially the sculptors who work with these entrepreneurs to get a masterpiece of stage.

The second day, and whatever comes out of it, is essentially a direct byproduct of all the hard work that goes into it by the entrepreneurs, mentors, and the organizers – behind closed doors.

We’ll get to that later, but I want to focus on the Startup School sessions. So far we’ve had the likes of Mohanjit Jolly (DFJ), Ravi Narayan (Mentor Partners), Vishal Gondal (IndiaGames), Laura Parkin (NEN), Sujai Karampuri (Sloka Telecom), Alok Kerjiwal (Games2Win), Sekar Vembu (Vembu Technologies), Ashish Gupta (Helion Ventures), Rohit Agarwal (Techtribe), Alok Mittal (Canaan Partners), Gopal Srinivasan (TVS Electronics), Sanjay Swamy (Mchek), Atul Chitnis (Geodesic/FOSS.in), Rajesh Jain (Netcore). Who knew India had some fabulous Entrepreneurs right under our nose, huh?

So You get the idea.

Who would you like to hear from for the upcoming edition of Proto.in July? Let us know and We’ll make sure that they are there – if they are within the boundaries of this country, and perhaps even further :)

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admin, April 28th 2008 | Posted in proto, proto.in, proto2008se

Proto.in Delhi Edition ‘08 Comes Your Way.

Attending Proto.in Delhi

From an event planning perspective, the first and foremost major milestones are the dates and the venue. We’ve just about finalized them. We had played a bit of a gamble announcing the dates first and then looking for the venue, but as luck should have it, we’ve managed within the same timelines and have tentatively finalized on it.

Dates: July 18th and 19th 2008.
Venue: IIT Delhi, Delhi.

Do keep an eye on the blog and sign up for the mailing list to stay up-to-date on whats being planned for this edition of Proto.in. We made a promise that for every edition of Proto.in, rather than coming together and group whining about what all is wrong for the startups in India, we’d make an attempt to solve them. The Startup Lunch initiative was one such effort to solve the hiring problem that Startups were facing – and its been extremely well received. We have a slew of such initiatives under wraps which we will be launching in every consecutive editions, and obviously the Proto.in companies will be given priority for each of these services – as much as they are open to all, as of now. If you wanted to know, that’s one more reason to head to the nomination page and to submit your company profile, if you are a technology product based Indian startup.

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admin, April 28th 2008 | Posted in proto, proto.in, proto2008se

Weekly Update

1. Startup Lunch Chennai.
After being all around the country, Delhi – Pune – Bangalore, Startup Lunch Chennai is happening this weekend. We have about nine startups and 31 people registered so far, and it does seem promising. I am looking forward to see how it spans out. I am hearing news from bangalore that this week, two of the candidates who came to the Startup Lunch there were hired by a company which met them there. So, It’s very much the beginning of what all are possible.

More on this at http://startuplunch.proto.in

2. TiE Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008.
After two years following 2006, TiE Delhi along with Canaan has brought back the Entrepreurial Challenge partnering with the likes of Microsoft, ISB, Business World and several other key icons of the business world. The competition promises to provide support in terms of Market Development Support from Microsoft, Training Programs from ISB, Media coverage by Business World, Mentorship by the TiE and NASSCOM Network, and access to Investors.

The deadlines for the event are 12th May. Follow the link for more information.

3. The Proto.in Twitter Feed.
Have you wonderered what’s happening behind the scenes in Proto.in? Ever since we bumped into Twitter, we’ve fallen quite in love with it since its quite easy to broadcast microblogs to a set of folks. The Proto.in team will be constantly publishing in the twitter feed at www.twitter.com/protodotin. If you are interested to know whats happening, feel free to “follow” the feed.

4. Proto.in July Edition Nominations.
The nominations are going steadily. If you are a company that is planning to present at Proto.in. Do send in your nominations at the earliest. Deadlines are May 30th, 2008

5. Proto.in July Edition: Venue and Dates.
A part of the core team from Chennai was in Delhi last weekend to check out of options for venues and we had gone on a masssive run around looking for all the potential venues we could shortlist. As of now, we have frozen the venue as IIT Delhi (Will be confirmed in a day or two), and the dates as what was announced before – July 18th, 19th (Friday, Saturday). As usual, Startup School will be on the 18th and the Companies will present on the 19th.

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admin, April 26th 2008 | Posted in india, proto, proto.in, proto2008se, startups

BusinessGyan on Proto.in

Often we hear talk about the right ecosystem needed for entrepreneurs to thrive and build businesses of the future. However, rarely we ever find any effort made in this regard. In the recent past, only the TiE association has been instrumental in providing a global platform for SMEs to showcase themselves. Thankfully there is a welcome change in the status quo with the Proto.in, a premier entrepreneurial start-up forum coming into picture.

In its second edition in Chennai, Proto.in brought together investors, mentors, entrepreneurs, students and even industry bodies such as Nasscom and TiE. Vijay Anand the key visionary behind Proto.in feels that innovation in India is turning a new leaf now. It is about being different, being controversial and being out of the box, just like the Tata Nano.

Vijay says, “Since we are billion people country, most of the market segments are underserved. We need to monetise the emerging opportunities. When you compare the number of Indian companies and the number of firms listed in the U.S. stock exchanges, we haven’t even started the journey. So it’s time to take the lead and begin the journey. I believe that if 1% one innovative entrepreneurs lead, 99% will follow.”

Is the great dotcom saga back in circulation… Seems like the big bucks are chasing the online dream again. Eyebrows were raised when the Indian social networking startup Desimartini was recently in the news for….

\Read the Entire Article>

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admin, April 16th 2008 | Posted in india, proto, proto.in, proto2008fe, proto2008se, startups

First Team Meet in Delhi: 19th April

A set of core team members will be in Delhi on the weekend of the 19th (Saturday) to meet with the group in Delhi, and finalize on the venue and work out the logistics of the upcoming edition of Proto.in.

It’s usually a lot of fun having that first meet, since thats when dreams and aspirations run wild, and this is where the initial expectations and deliverables of the event are set and met. I am sure looking forward to catching up with the folks there, and am even moreso looking forward to the fact of working with a fresh new team with fresh faces, experiences and perspectives.

We are catching up for breakfast at around 10am in South Delhi at Barista Cafe at the The Basant Lok/Priya Cinema complex. The agenda of the meet is to basically meet and greet, and then perhaps run over some of the tasks that we need to cover for the event. Anyone who would like to join and volunteer is most certainly welcome.

Do leave a comment, if you’d like to meet. I’d love to catch up, if you are from the startup scene in Delhi. I most certainly would love to hear of how things are in Delhi, how we could help and change things for the better.

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admin, April 11th 2008 | Posted in india, proto, proto.in, proto2007se, proto2008se

Proto.in Videos are Out!

There is a lot of flurried activity going on within the team as we are fiestily debating the format that we are going to use for the next edition of Proto.in – which is going to be quite an evolved version over what we’ve been doing for the last three editions, and are quite eagerly anticipating and watching as the nominations are coming in.

I am sure quite a few of you are wondering, how the Proto.in stage really looks like. We decided it was finally time to unveil that to the world, and perhaps give you a glimpse. There was an “audience effort” done during the first edition of Proto.in where someone covered each of the companies’s presentations, all using a Nokia N Series phone. Without further adieu, the videos of the third edition of Proto.in, January 2008 are up.

URL: http://www.youtube.com/user/startupsindia

This channel will also soon see the business and technology tracks which have very much become the essence of Proto.in. Stay tuned, and feel free to embed the videos on your blogs. You are quite freely welcome.

Regards,
Vijay Anand

PS: The Nominations for the July Edition of Proto.in this year close on May 30th. But do nominate at the earliest, so that we can start working together much earlier and perhaps improve on your launch/product unveiling in a much more effective way.

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admin, April 9th 2008 | Posted in proto, proto.in, proto2008fe

Proto.in Live Chat Launched

Hi Everyone,

Well, as you must be aware, a few weeks ago we announced that we are going to put some of the internet servers to good use to enable real-time communications among those in the startup community. There was a very valid point raised with enough questions flooding my mailbox as to what ‘IRC’ meant and as to how to connect to “that thing”?

I understand the dilemma.

So for the benefit of all humanity and to not complicate things more than they are, we’ve simplified it all.

Click this link: Proto. Live Chat and you can bookmark that URL that shows up on your browser. It’s fairly a simple layout and quite easy to understand that you shouldn’t have an issues.

You can consider this Proto.in Live Chat beta. Depending on how the interest grows, we can build it from there.

I’m already there. Hope to see you there!

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admin, April 5th 2008 | Posted in proto, proto.in