Round Up of Headstart Summer 09

Headstart Summer 2009 got underway at Welingkars. Over the past year, the Headstart Foundation, as part of their vision of creating this ecosystem have, through their events, connected with over 5000 upcoming entrepreneurs. The foundation also manages a startup incubator at IIsc Bangalore. Today’s event saw over 200 people attending including entrepreneurs, professionals and investors.28 exciting startups showcased their offerings at the event. Some of the exciting ones were

MoneyVidya.com: Indian Stock picking community. The concept and the way they presented in the demo pit were impressive. They also have a revenue model in the pipeline which is critical for any startup.

SPOXCHANGE: Global sports-based exchange. This model reminded us of an application in Orkut called Cricxchange, which was very exciting. This concept is again very interesting and anything related to sports especially cricket in India, if taken in the right path would lead you to success.

Swan Suites: Branded boutique service apartments. In the present times when the tourism and hotel industry is grappling with the downturn effects, it is interesting to see a startup in the Service Industry. They have some exciting competition from Ginger homes and many other players in the market. As the panelists said, Pricing would be the key differentiator.

veriCAR: Used car inspection and certification. Vericar has a big advantage of entering into the market which is growing. The key factor for Vericar to be successful would be creating a trustworthy brand image by which people can vouch for and trust them blindly.

Informate Mobile Intelligence: Mobile consumer usage intelligence software. Informate had some very interesting products on line. But the question as the panelist and audience asked rightly is ‘How will the end user benefit from using this service?’.

160by2 was very interesting and BlueFi seems promising as well. 160by2 seems to be picking up the right chords correctly and moving up. EventAZoo did not demo but were there at the pit and seems good. Remember Eventbrite, well they are trying to do all that and more and in India.

To guide the companies, there were industry leaders, including venture capitalists, Angel investors and others were present. The prominent ones present where Vishal Gondal, Harsh Roongta, Gopala Krishnan, Freeman Murray, Sasha Mirchandani, Alok Mittal, Krishna Mony, Krish Nair, Indus Khaitan, Pradeep Tagare, and Mr Pravin Gandhi.

There was an interesting panel discussion conducted by Mr Pravin Gandhi, Pradeep Tagare and Gaurav Saraf. The theme of the workshop was Raising Finance for early Stage Companies. There were some very interesting inputs provided by them. Overall, Headstart was a very well managed event and trust that lot of people who attended found it useful.

We as one of the media partners thorougly enjoyed it. We look forward for more such events and more such associations in future.