Startup Saturday in Mumbai

I have been a regular attendant of Startup Saturday from quite sometime though this was my first one in Mumbai. The venue was very convenient, 1 floor below  my classroom in SP Jain. I would like to cover the course of events in brief here.

The event kicked off with a quick round of introduction. The theme of the event was food and beverages. Then there were 3 lightening pitches presentations. First was questionpapers.com, a business model around student’s question papers. This will be a user generated content wherein students can come and upload and download study question papers freely. Few things which came during Q&A was that there no incentive for anybody to upload papers though there would be good number of students interested in downloading. The promoter is finding it  difficult to monetize the idea. The real bottom line is to build a loyal base of students and generate a large question paper database. There was a suggestion from one of us that it would make more sense to focus before going whole hog on it. Personally, the idea did not appeal to me.

The second business pitch was shareyourjoy.com. It is a online platform to create and find wish lists for various celebrations in life. This is already a popular concept in US, where people generate their wedding and b’day wish lists which help visitors present their gifts. As such, I have heard of this idea before but good to see somebody going about doing it. People in India was still very conservative when it comes to sharing their wishes around. Nonetheless, this is just a start and there is long way ahead. I gave a suggestion to work on pull model wherein the gifts database could be dynamically updated. Also there was a concern on cheapest gifts which I think is very relevant in Indian context.

The third presentation was on a web-based e-tender management solution. The idea has been conceptualize 1.5 years back and able to garner some business. People found revenue model bit off wherein sellers and buyers both need to bear the cost of the product services. There was a suggestion to sell this a software product as against web-based solution. I found the business well but really not sure about takers of same in Indian context where a large part of tendering is done by government who is already working with IT majors on automating several key business processes.

Tea break followed by a brief talk by Mr Hari from DB’s Matunga. The talk was a journey of a businessman as how he went about building his business.  Mr. Hari looked to be thorough professional and answered questions to perfection. He looked passionate about his work and shared a insightful anecdote from his experience about handling a irate customer. These guys have recently open a new restaurant in Lowel Parel, Wok Hei, a 38 seater Chinese restaurant. Mr. Hari was damn sure about not making this a chain as he was happy with the current operations and quality of service.

Last talk was by Mr Talekar. This was a struggling journey of 2 IIM pass outs who wanted to make a beer by themselves. Got to know about craft beer and briefly about brewing process. This talk had elements of pain and passion. These guys make a beer in the name of doodally. I was amazed to see their perservance and the talk stayed in my mind for quite some hours.