Its a bright Monday morning and Good morning.

I believe it has been more than three years since we as a group started thinking of startups, and wanting to help them, and at that point in time, showcasing some of the best startups India has produced – even amidst some of the adverse conditions for startup entrepeneurs – has been the way we have been doing our deed. Proto.in has build a fabulous reputation over the years, a 2000+ active and vibrant community, our presence felt in more than 13 cities across the country – and all of this built at a (monetary) cost that is extremely hard to agree. The passion and commitment of the team and YOUR suport is what has made it all happen.

We have a 120+ active volunteer group, and an extremely strong core team, and I do realize that none of them are really going to step up to the place unless, I give them the option and the chance to. Proto.in has to live on, and with the way the community adores it, I believe it will.

But here will be the true test of it. I will be stepping back into the background starting in the next few days, leaving the things in the hands of the core team, and you. Ravi Shankar, and Sudhir Syal will be the key champions who will be leading this forward. And they are set on stone that Proto.in Pune is going to rock. And I believe them.

I would request all of you personally to extend your support to them to make this happen.

As for me, I am starting to think, with the outburst of showcase events (TiE Summits, E-Summits, NASSCOM’s Emerge 50, NEN’s Hottest Startups, HeadStart etc), that we are all probably looking at one directon while there is a larger gap to fill. I am not anymore convinced that a showcase event alone is what will build the ecosystem, we have to go beyond that and support, nurture, and built a backbone first. The initiatives we’ve been playing with – Startup Lunch, The Chat etc, are giving us proof for that. I will be taking the time to perhaps visit a few places, and some of the other ecosystems, to understand, and get a slightly different perspective towards this mission that we started off with, a thousand days ago.

Thanks again for all your support, and I once again request that you contribute to making the startups win in India.

Regards,
Vijay Anand
Advisor, Proto.in

Even as Barcamps, Open Coffee Clubs, Startup Saturdays and several forms of informal support groups are emerging in this country, one of the biggest problem that we seem to be facing is the fact that we are still very urban-centric. All these meets happen in four or five of the major metros in the country – whereas we probably should be a bit more inclusive about it. There are issues such as the lack of experienced entrepreneurs to share from their life’s tale and help out emerging and aspiring entrepreneurs that seem to be stiffling some of the productivity in some of these informal meets.

Well, technology can solve that problem in some aspect, and we are going to give it our best shot.

We are opening up this Chat Application that we’ve had built, and testing in some occassions to see how we can spin this to solve this issue. Every Saturday between 9am and 5pm – and without fail, every week, we are planning to keep the Proto.in Chat [Link here] open and anyone can visit the site, and interact with entrepreneurs from across the country. We understand that Startup Saturdays happen on the same dates, so if possible we will get someone who is attending the sessions to live chat in the sessions so that the wisdom share can be spread to a larger audience if possible.

So, we’ve done and are doing our part to solve this problem. Now the request is that you be a part of this, to be there, spend sometime in the channel, interacting with, and helping out one entrepreneur to another, and in truly making entrepreneurship a lifestyle choice for those who wish for it – even beyond the metros.

Looking forward to seeing you there. And spread the word.

PS: If you dont want to eternally hang out, but keep an alert for whenever the channel gets active, visit the site, or the blog, and you can set an alert to remind you as certain number of people come online.

Regards,
Vijay Anand
Curator, Proto.in

These are links to some presentations that were part of Startonomics, a conference for Startups. There are some very good nuggets that most of our companies could benefit from:

1. Moving out of the Garage:

2. Product Development 101 (Fast Track Product Development)

3. Five Questions You Must Answer

4. Pitching and Packaging for Partnerships (The Bare Essentials you need to get right to think partnerships)

5. The startup Process (Basics on Starting up, Venture Funding, etc etc)

6. If you are in the Internet space or have a site, this might be useful. How to grow traffic to your site:

On 7th Feb 2009, IIT Bombay will host ‘The Entrepreneurship Summit‘, one of the most prestigious entrepreneurship events in campuses. The event aims to bring together aspiring entrepreneurs, start-ups, successful entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academicians on a common platform to interact and help build successful enterprises.

This year, the Summit aims at Empowering Entrepreneurs. Looking into major issues faced by them, inspiring them through the stories of the successful ventures before theirs and supporting them through different activities in the day.

Workshops at E-Summit 09 will emphasize on critical issues faced by entrepreneurs and start-ups at early stages of development

Some of the promenent speakers include Mr. Kanwal Rekhi, Mr. Alyque Padamsee, Mr. Rahul Bose, Ms. Farzana Haque, Mr. Terence Hart, Mr. Ashok Wadhwa, Mr. R. Balki, Ms. Anjali Bansal and many more.

E-Summit 09 will also host the finals of Eureka 08, Asia’s largest Business Plan competition.

The other highlights of the event are:

Start-up Showcasing: It is a unique initiative aiming at provide visibility to some of the most exclusive and innovative start-ups by showcasing them on the day of the summit. To showcase your start-up visit: www.esummit.ecell.in/startup.php

Mentoring and Networking Sessions: Designed to provide aspiring and budding entrepreneurs opportunities to network and receive one to one mentoring from corporate and academic world.

Global Conference of E-Cells: Promoting collaboration among Entrepreneurship promoting organizations.

Investor Pitch: Ventures seeking Seed funding or early stage funding get a chance to pitch in front of an elite panel of VC’s

Panel Discussions: Some of the best minds in the startup and VC industry come together to share their experiences, debate the strategies and advise on ideas to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Proto.in is happy to associate with eSummit as a supporting partner. The event is conducted by The Entrepreneurship Cell of IIT Bombay. You can get more information about the event at http://esummit.ecell.in

Website: www.lifemojo.com

Based on the belief that ‘Prevention is better than cure’, LifeMojo helps you to achieve your fitness goals by helping you keep track of all that you eat and maintain a fitness regimen. Keeping an eye on the calories that you consume and burn, LifeMojo helps you have a healthy lifestyle. A user typically registers on LifeMojo and starts tracking his/her daily food intake and workouts. LifeMojo aims to bring on board a lot of nutritionists with different cuisine specializations that a user can associate with and begin Nutrition consultation.
One can also check the calories that a person is about to consume on LifeMojo, or by simply sending the food item’s name to calories@lifemojo.com using GTalk. They also support a SMS Calorie lookup feature.

2. Yoplr:

Website: www.yoplr.com

Yoplr is essentially a travel planner with extended features. When a user picks a source and a destination, it suggests places to visit en-route and supports with details like time required to cover that place, detours if any, distance covered etc. They also provide the extra cost required for that and also the choice of added luxuries that you can fit into your travel plan. Yoplr also takes into account details like traveling with family, kids or alone while giving suggestions. Currently their services are for Karnataka and Goa only.

3. iFlapp

Website: www.i-flapp.com

Intelligent Flash Application is what the company stands for and they endeavor to provide a complete solution for portable devices. They help making applications like Photoshop, Office, Adobe reader and others portable on any USB drive or hard disk. Their application Apps D needs to be installed on the external storage device and can be ported to any location. It is compatible with any Windows system – 2000 and above.

4. Green and economic fuel kit for two wheelers

Website: none

An initiative by Lords Automotives, it is an LPG fuel kit for 2-wheelers which would be sold to bring in revenues. They are looking at being an answer to alternate fuel systems for two wheelers.

5. Noddler

Website: www.noddler.com

This product is by Uniphore software systems and claims to be the world’s first intelligent voice response system. It aims to provide the services of the internet over a phone through voice. Its “Sandbox” feature caters to online businesses; helping them customize the voice interface to suit their offering. It is a web interface for developing multi-lingual voice based applications for any web service. The Voice User Interface is highly customizable and personalized. The callers can set their preferences on the website and are greeted by an intuitive interface on the call post that. Unlike traditional Voice Response systems, Noddler remembers and learns from each call that a user makes and personalizes on the fly, thereby eliminating the necessity of having to go through long menus each time.

6. IndiaKhelo

Website: www.IndiaKhelo.com

IndiaKhelo is a system trying to empower the grass-root sports structure in India. It promotes outdoor games in schools and corporate environment. The website makes the process of keeping scores and storing them interesting for users, creating a credible portfolio for each player alongside. A representative usually monitors the scores of the other players and ensures the authenticity of it. IndiaKhelo also organizes Indian Regional Leagues and gives local talent an opportunity to showcase their caliber and be noticed.

7. Inkfruit

Website: www.inkfruit.com

Inkfruit calls itself India’s first democratic product brand. Members registered on Inkfruit get to upload designs for T-shirts, Posters and other products on their website. The community votes on all designs submitted and collectively decide on the products to be included into the Inkfruit range. These are then available for sale. Through this process, Inkfruit empowers students, freelancers and professional designers – their work is showcased and stands a chance to actually enter the market. It is amazing to see that an un-controlled group of designers across the world can come up with really awesome products.

8. OOHA Kiosks

Website: www.oo-ha.com

Founded in 2007, Ooha today is a Free Internet Access provider in Chennai. Ooha’s provides businesses advertising and promotion programs, while providing FREE internet access for users. Ooha will deploy 50 Internet enabled kiosks in Chennai in the next 3 months and plans to extend the same services to the rest of the country. Placed in prime locations like malls and entertainment centers, these kiosks host applications from select providers too. The kiosks serve as advertising platforms for businesses through which Ooha plans to make its revenues

9. Nualgi

Website: www.kadambari.net

A clean tech company, which looks at reviving water bodies which have been polluted. Nualgi is used to grow diatom algae in any water including sewage polluted water. The diatoms produce oxygen, in turn consuming nutrients like nitrates and phosphates. Nualgi is made by a complex process and the same has been patented. Nualgi has been tested thouroughly over the past 4 years and is being used in Aquafarms in South India.

10. Remindo

Website: www.remindo.com

Remindo is a FREE online platform that merges productivity and social activities in offices. It is a collaborative suite of Web-based tools which aid professionals to get things done, socialize and communicate informally across the office.

11. Taroby:

Website: www.taroby.com

Email management in SMEs is made simpler by Taroby with the concept of Team Inbox which would help organizations to work more efficiently. Taroby is a SaaS based messaging and collaboration suite that enables sharing of email accounts among team members. This implies that emails are accessible to all team members working on a particular assignment or project, with the possibility to assign messages directly to individual team members. Using Taroby as a Team Inbox brings in transparency within the team. The entire team knows who is responsible for a particular email. Internal communication within the team is handled by notes which can be added to each message.

12. Fachak

Website: www.fachak.com

Fachak is a content sharing service that connects with existing platforms like Youtube, Slideshare and Flickr, providing the user with one single unified interface which can be used to view, upload and share content. Be it video, presentation, doc or images, Fachak ensures that the user does not have to worry about the format of the content. They believe that the user consumes content and hence should not be encumbered by the format. They acknowledge that while building a multi-format platform was a necessity, providing a front-end for the existing services and not ignoring them was the optimum solution.

Want to announce two things:

One, you might want to come early and register at the event, to pick up a Proto.in T-Shirt for yourself.

Secondly, In this edition of Proto, we present to you a unique Notes Sharing Collaboration tool. Using this tool, you can take Notes as the event unfolds and have your notes shared to other users; alongside seeing others’ notes too.

The best part is that it will work without wi-fi and there is not setup needed. All synchronization will happen automatically whenever conference wi-fi is available. So, even if you miss a session or two, you wouldn’t actually miss out on what happened during the event.

Once you reach the venue, visit http://notes.proto.in/. Fill up your username and click on the “Download” button. It will download a single HTML file which you have to open using your browser & start typing. Rest all is magic!

Please make good use of this tool during the event. Hoping to see you there!

Regards,
The Proto.in Team

PS: Credits to Aswin Anand for making this wonderful tool available.

We are giving away three Ipod Shuffles at the event this time, courtesy of Infibeam (http://www.infibeam.com/). This is the same company that acquired Picsquare (One of the Proto.in companies), a few months back.

Got your fancy? Here’s what you need to do:

If you are a blogger, you will be following the same concept as last time and liveblogging the event. The best Liveblogger, gets an iPod Shuffle, selected by the audience and best vote right there at the venue. The rules are simple:

1. Have a link to the site www.proto.in. Should have a logo of Proto.in on the post
2. Use the tag protodotin and proto5 – we wont be able to find your post otherwise
3. If you want to be extra nice and gain some brownie points from our sponsor, you can mention Infibeam and write a little about what you think about their site and their offering.
4. Leave a link to your blog as a comment to this post.

If you are a addictive Twitterer, the rules are:

1. Follow @protodotin
2. Retweet the message “I will be tweeting from Proto.in (www.proto.in) for the contest”
3. use the hash tag #protodotin for all the tweets
4. Have one opening tweet with the link to the site
5. The tweets have to be live.

If you are a creative snap photographer, the rules are:

1. Click
2. Upload them on flickr
3. tag them with the tags protodotin and proto5
4. Leave the link to your pool as a comment to this Blog post.

And let the games begin! Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Regards,
The Proto.in Team

Do Let us know if you have any feedbacks regarding the same.

Regards,
Vijay Anand
Proto.in

# Ahmedabad:
Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship.
Indian Institute of Management,
New Campus
Vastrapur,
Ahmedabad – 380015
Gujarat
Contact: Aditi Gupta @ 9925584073

# Bangalore

Yulop WebSense Solutions Pvt. Ltd
24/2 and 24/3,
KRVP building,
21st main,BSK 2nd stage,
Bangalore – 560070
Contact: Sridhar @ 9980004542

Axis Books
Domlur Intermediate Ring Road (DIRR)
Near Airport Road Flyover
Domlur layout
Bangalore -71
Contact: +918040383838, +9180415BOOKS(26657)

# Chennai

Tenmiles Corporation
Jhaver Plaza, First Floor,
#1a Nungambakkam High Road, Nungambakkam
Chennai 600 034, India
Tel: +91 44 28310000
Contact: Pulkit / Neeraj / Shalin

TeNeT
#203, CSD Block,
Electrical Engineering Department
Indian Institute of Technology – Madras
Chennai – 36
Contact: Vijay Anand @ 9894101373

# Delhi:
Ixigo
324, Galleria Towers
DLF Phase 4
Gurgaon – 122 002
Contact: Dharmendra Yashovardhan
Email: proto@ixigo.com
Ph- 0124 404 5281

# Mumbai:

iRefr Recruitment Solutions Pvt Ltd
103- A, Masalawala Co-op Society,
Juhu Lane, Near Navnit Motors,
Mumbai -58
Mob No – Supreet Singh -9920011797, Kaushik Bhanushali -9833253033

# Pune
c/o BookEazy Technologies Private Limited
831/A Shivaji Nagar, Uma Heights,
BMCC College Road
Pune 411004.
Contact: Santosh Dawara, sdawara@gmail.com.