The first round of Startup Weekend events in India came to a close in March. Startup Weekend Delhi was held at the American Center from March 4th till March 6th 2011 and Startup Weekend Bangalore was held from March 11th till March 13th 2011 at Microsoft’s Signature building.
September 2nd 2011 marked the beginning of the next round of Startup Weekend events across India. Startup Weekend Hyderabad was held at ISB from the 2nd – 4th of September. This was the first SW held in Hyderabad and we honestly didn’t know what to expect. We had only sold 25 tickets in the first 2 months that ticket sales were open. In the last three days before the Friday night pitches, we sold over 50 additional tickets.
I’ve seen lots and lots of “me too” ideas and quite a few “ho-hum” ideas. There are some decent ideas with very little depth prior to SW. Startup events in India need to be about team formation, experience building and experimentation. Between these three events, Startup Weekend has kicked off 39 teams of entrepreneurs, techies, designers, and business people. Granted, out of these 39 teams, probably not even four will survive more than a year but that’s not the point. The point is that these 175 or so people, will be better entrepreneurs the next time around.
I believe these three events did something that no other event in India has done so far. It showed people that they CAN execute their ideas in a very short span of time. With complete strangers, in most cases, they can put together a business case and build a prototype to showcase to potential investors.
In a few cases, teams from Startup Weekend in India have had discussions with investors directly as a result of Startup Weekend. One of the biggest pain points for many entrepreneurs in India has been funding and Startup Weekend in India has helped ease this pain point in a small but important way.
Startup Weekend has also shown investors that entrepreneurs, techies, designers can do some really interesting things in a short period of time if all the ingredients are there. It’s created potential deal flow for early stage investors starved for invest-able ideas teams. Already, Startup Weekend clones are popping up across India.
The confidence and the energy that people have displayed at Startup Weekend in Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad has been quite contagious. Techies were pushed to deliver minimum viable products and marketers and business people were forced to come up with viable plans in a very short time span. In just a weekend, many people were able to successfully deliver business cases and prototypes. Having done so has shown them that they CAN, in fact, put together teams of the right people and deliver. Being able to find co-founders that can execute has given people the confidence needed to take their ideas from Startup Weekend and pursue them.
Another very important factor was the presence of great mentors that spent considerable amounts of time with the business, techie and design members of each team, helping them develop various aspects of their ideas and the technology being employed. Many of the mentors present have exhibited interest in helping future teams in the same way. Even some panelists have shown interest in being mentors and working with the various teams throughout the next Startup Weekends in India. However, some mentors and panelists have also been disappointed by the lack of depth in the ideas.
I have found that for entrepreneurs in India finding the right co-founders and having mentors to help guide them through the various pitfalls that they continually faced is a continuous problem. Of course, funding issues are an issue everywhere but in India, it’s far more pronounced. To me, the idea of getting the right people with similar mindsets and mentors, serial entrepreneurs with significant experience in a room with raw ideas and oodles of enthusiasm was what people in India have been missing. Bringing all these components together, mixing them up, laying down some rules and bending a whole lot of others has given people who had very little chance of execution or success an opportunity to try their ideas in a safe and risk-free environment. In essence, the Startup Weekend philosophy is helping Indians try out ideas without quitting their day jobs, find people who buy into their ideas, and have people around to immediately guide them in their execution.
Personally, Startup Weekend has given me an opportunity to return to India and give back something that I’m very passionate and excited about – entrepreneurship. The opportunity to help entrepreneurs, both young and old, realize that they can and should take a chance on themselves and their ideas is a great feeling. Instead of just telling them that they should, Startup Weekend has given me a chance to show them that they can. If my contribution to the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem can help create even one startup out of each event, I believe I’ve given back more than I could have hoped for.
India is a difficult place to understand, with all of its contradictions, it’s rapid modernization, it’s pathetic infrastructure, it’s volatile stock market, it’s real-estate market that defies all logic, it’s incredible wealth and it’s dire poverty. However, India has been a land of entrepreneurs with it’s small businesses, it’s kinara stores, it’s newly minted multi-national corporations. In the last twenty years, much of the entrepreneurial spirit that’s in India’s blood has been lost. Mostly because better opportunities to make money presented themselves with the IT, ITES, call center and other service businesses. However, I believe a new generation of entrepreneurs is emerging. India is draining entrepreneurial and engineering talent from other parts of the world. It’s not just Indians or people of Indian origin coming to India, it’s the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese, the British, the Americans, the French, the Germans, the Italians and everyone else in between who are contributing to a new entrepreneurial culture.