Back in Mumbai J
After a short hiatus in Bangalore with ‘ze job life’, I’m back home. It’s been
about two weeks, and I’ve begun to get antsy. Need to go out meet some new
people. I had read about Startup Saturday a couple of months back, and it
seemed interesting, but I had never got the chance to check it out. It occurs
every second Saturday of the month, and I was just in time for their next
event, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
The rationale behind a Startup Saturday is to provide a
monthly platform where local entrepreneurs, professionals and students can get
together around engaging talks from veterans in the startup industry. Each
event has a loose theme and relevant speakers from the chosen theme. The
audience plays an active role in shaping the discussions and brain storming is
to be found aplenty. (*)
The event was held at SP Jain institute of Managerial
Research, Andheri. I entered what seemed to be one of their lecture halls, with
around ten to fifteen people of different age groups waiting for registrations.
My first thought was – “Okayyyy. What am I doing here again?” They all seemed
to be pretty experienced – or MBAs, the very least. A couple of them were
working away on some sort of presentation on their laptops, some were browsing
through personal notes in diaries, and I was feeling thoroughly out of place. Nevertheless, I took a seat. I was beginning to wonder if I’d be the only
college graduate there. But people started pouring in slowly; and I was about
to realize how wrong I was in making that assumption, as you will soon find out.
J
The first speaker was Dinesh Tejwani, a CA with a keen
interest in I.T, managing director of Fast Facts(*), a paid tax software.
FastFacts business was recently acquired by Thomson Reuters. Mr Tejwani's
session went in depth about software distribution and sales.
The next speaker was Gaurav Bhardwaj, Regional Manager,
Mumbai, from CMO Axis, which he introduced as an ‘MPO’. Wait. What? I’d heard
of KPO and BPO. Clearly, this was something new. CMO Axis(*) is the first in
its kind- a Marketing Process Outsourcing company. They handle everything from
sales analytics, marketing campaigns, positioning and targeting of product,
channel creation, sales operations, and so on. His argument was that
outsourcing one’s marketing process to an expert is a good option for someone
who is new in the business. He gave an example of a case study where a client
from the IT domain came to them, saying that they wanted CMO Axis to help plan
and manage a music event in various colleges in their area, sponsored by them,
to help increase visibility among students. CMO Axis turned it around, and
instead, gave them a more interesting option of sponsoring a coffee table book
to the principal’s offices, whose contents covered the stories of young
achievers in their area. A visually aesthetic product, a relevant item in an
office setting, emotion in the right place, and right in front of the
principal’s table- what more visibility do you need? Brilliant, I’d say. But a
lot of the attendees were not convinced about how cost effective outsourcing
their marketing processes would be, especially for someone starting a new
business. Also, Outsourcing v/s having an in-house team to do the process for
you - most people believed the latter was a less risky option.
Following this was a small tea break-cum-networking session.
I met people with varied business interests- from ‘Meter down’, (*)a company
that does branding for auto rickshaws, to venture capitalists looking for new
ideas, people who had worked for four-five years in multinational companies,
looking for interesting start-ups to work with, people who had established
their companies and were looking for help in specific areas, some who had an
idea, and were looking for mentorship to help them implement it.
After the break, there was a small rendezvous of sorts,
between entrepreneurs looking for people they want to work with them, and
people looking for jobs in start-ups. Each party was made to give a 1 minute
introduction, stating who they were as a company and what they were looking
for. It was a good way to break the ice, and also to let some of the attendees
achieve their purpose of coming to the event.
After this, was a talk by Kunal Shah, CEO of freecharge.in(*),
an online mobile recharge portal. Until now, most of the talks had been very
cut and dried, focussing largely on the core business point of view, making it
slightly difficult for newcomers to fully appreciate the content. Right at the
beginning of the event, Kunal had introduced himself, and asked everyone to
write down their specific questions on a piece of paper and pass it to him,
just so that he gets a feel of which areas of concern need to be talked about
in his session. He introduced his talk by bringing in the infamous ‘we are like
this only’ charade that we Indians are oh-so-familiar with. He talked about the
USP of his business- the reason his company was such a big success- the word
‘free’. 50 % off, buy 1 get 1 free, one bucket free with every 5 kg pack of
Surf Excel that we don’t really need - sad to say, but that’s who we are. And this
is why, the concept of coupons, giving discount on everything under the sun-
from McDonalds to Crossword, Shoppers Stop to Jet Airways, free, of course with
every recharge, worked brilliantly. He talked about how one needs to understand
the nuances of a culture to sell it things, and how copying business models
from abroad and trying to implement them here may not always work, as our
entire setup works in a completely different way. What I liked was how he knew
he was right, and completely unapologetic about it. He said that as a nation,
we are afraid of taking risks- from education, to marriage, switching homes or
jobs- and that holds us back from taking the plunge. His talk was more
generalised, and generated good discussions. He addressed all the questions,
from ‘when is the right time to start’ (which he replied with a curt-‘just go
for it’), questions on SEO, market, competition, and so on. All in all, it was
a great talk.
I was kind of surprised to see the next speaker. This was an
electronics graduate from Sardar Patel College of engineering, Mumbai, Directors
of Deltecs(*), talking about his first client- Wipro. Theirs was a mobile
platform (called Drona) , which could be used for corporate communication,
training, sales and HR. He gave a short but engaging presentation on ‘what to
do and what not to do’, when giving a sales pitch to a client. About what they
say, and what they really mean. There were some good tips there, (like if the
client says ‘drop me a mail, I’ll get back to you’, it simply means ‘SPAM
ALERT!’ J)
Following this was a couple of Lightning Pitches, which is
basically a short presentation by aspiring entrepreneurs about their upcoming
ventures – to attract VCs, get the crowd engaged about their product, generate
discussion about it and so on. There was one on a new social network, and one
on a new idea that is trying to increase CSR in big firms.
So there was a good mix of people there. What I mostly felt
was that a lot of people had great business acumen, but not the necessary
technical skills to implement them. Some of them had probably worked for
several years in a sector, and had everything else they needed to start their
own companies, but the technical knowhow was a drawback. Which is why a lot of
people there were looking for CTO (chief technical officers), java developers,
computer grads, the works. Some people felt that the discussion had become too
IT oriented this time, but with internet visibility becoming a huge factor for
brand value, one needs to step up in this sector to grow. So a session on
marketing without bringing in IT was not quite possible.
Also, there was something for everyone – from Kunal’s
inspiring speech, to a young graduate’s (Divyesh) venture and his journey,
marketing knowledge for those seeking professional help, it was great. Everyone
present, especially the volunteers, were open to feedback and having healthy discussions
on what can be changed, how the event can be improved, open to offering
mentorship and/or volunteering opportunities to those interested.
This was something new for me, and I felt exhilarated by the
experience. I recommend you to attend the next chapter of Startup Saturday(9th
June, SPJIMR, 2:30 PM) . Looking forward to the next event!
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