The Winners @ SWMUM Feb 2012
Yet another successful and energy filled Startup Weekend comes to an end and we have tons of stories, memories, experience and 3 winners from this edition. A focussed group of entrepreneurs made 7 pitches to the judging panel on Sunday. Three of them were awarded winners. Here is a bit more about who the three teams are: (more…)
The Line-up Startup Weekend Mumbai!
We are hours away from final presentations at Startup Weekend Mumbai and the teams are giving final touches to their startups. Some busy getting a video cut of their customer validation, some hard at coding, while others preparing the financials for their final presentation. So what would you see at 5PM today? Well here is the list of 7 startups coming out of Startup Weekend Mumbai:
1 – VirtuLabs
VirtuLabs is about Virtualising your Laboratory Experiments ! Ever thought of trying whacky Chemistry experiments and were turned down by your school teacher ? Come aboard ! We create “Simulators” to give you the “Laboratory Experience” right through your browser. These “Virtual Experiments ” can be integrated with the “Ebooks” so that you could “actually” perform experiments while reading your Ebooks !
The world is just so “Real” !
Twitter: @virtulabs | FaceBook
2 – WhereUGoin
Sometimes we do smart things, sometimes we do dumb things. Most of the time we don’t do anything! With our magical app, you’ll have a way to go out and have fun without cutting fruits or killing pigs on your phone. Whereugo.in gives you hyper-localized places/events that you can visit NOW! You tell us how much time you have, you tell us what you prefer and we
tell you whereugo.in!
Web | @whereugoin1 | FaceBook
3 - Ossum – Deals You Love
Ossum gathers deals from the hottest deal websites and shows you only the ones you’ll love!
4 - Star Outfits
Its an idea for a person to order any of the apparel that he/she sees on TV. This can best be explained with an example.
eg: Lata is getting her daily fix of Pavitra Rishta on Zee TV. Archana, the female protagonist, is getting ready for a party. She ends up in a green and gold saree. Lata has an inkling that her husband would love her in this saree. She calls Star Outfits at 56767, and places her order by saying “Today, Zee TV, Pavitra Rishta, Archana”. Two weeks later, her saree is delivered.
5 - The Cause Connection
The Cause Connection connects volunteers, organisations and donors to facilitate discovery, intelligent matching, assure quality while creating social impact. It is an online portal which works as a network of volunteers and organisations, providing services to match the right causes to the right volunteers through smart search functionality. As a network, members will be able to share experiences, feedback & visual media on the portal. An element of competition will be achieved by awarding Karma points to active volunteers and allowing them to share these on social networking platforms. As part of the premium feature set, organisations will be able to use the portal to attract a larger number of volunteers for their projects and access advanced functionality for managing volunteers. In the future donors will be added to this ecosystem.
6 – ChaloLetsGo
ChaloLetsGo is an innovative business venture aimed at bridging the gap between commuters and auto-rickshaw service providers. Using the power of modern technology, our vision is to create a win-win environment wherein both parties would feel spoken to and supported in their plight.
To make our vision a reality, our enthusiastic group of multinationals spent hours brainstorming on the current situation, analysing previous attempts at solving the problem, speaking directly to the individuals involved and forming a concrete and viable business solution propelled by the values of transparency and trust. All this with a promise to increase neither risk nor cost for those parties involved.
The main problem we found to be disrupting the current status-quo and leading to increased levels of frustration between commuters and service providers was a clear and potent communication gap. Many previous attempts we researched looked into only one side of the problem, leaving the other side to benefit by default only. ChaloLetsGo wants to change this model and work with all stake holders to achieve an ultimate end result earning the trust and support of both the currently frustrated commuters as well as the unhappy service providers.
ChaloLetsGo, we never say no!
7 – StreamMyDJ
Need an Bollywood DJ from India at your next house party? Or do you fancy the best French DJ at your kid’s Bat Mitzvah?
Stream My DJ works as a platform for connecting DJs remotely to their clients from anywhere in the world, so that you can afford a DJ at every party. The DJ streams his music over the internet to the client. We provide sound systems with our contractors on the ground backed up with excellent customer support minutes away.
The Action At Startup Weekend Mumbai
The first ever Startup Weekend is underway in Mumbai and the 8 teams formed last evening are hard at work. With organizers flying in from Hyderabad and Delhi, we do have a healthy presence of past SW participants interacting with the teams and that gives us a super focussed weekend at hand.
Personally this is the 4th Startup Weekend for me and the first as a solo facilitator, am sure blessed that our sponsors Inforica (Hey Sudeep) has built an awesome backend (SwHub.net) for us to manage our registrations, voting, teams etc. It is Saturday Evening and the intensity is hitting its peak now. Teams are almost clear with their business model and we can surely look forward to some serious starutps presenting tomorrow. For now, a quick glimpse SWMUM:
Final Agenda
Friday
5:00pm – Doors open at the venue. Registration and networking starts
6:00pm – Dinner will be served early so we can move thru the night without interruption. Mingle with people, network, etc.
7:00pm – Official Kickoff of Startup Weekend and Welcome
7:10pm – Presentations by guest speakers
8:00pm to 9:00pm – Pitches Begin (Pitches are 60-seconds each. Pitch your best idea first, because we may not have a chance for second or third pitches. No Slides/decks/etc. 60 second elevator pitch only. Make it count!)
9:00pm – 10:00pm – Pitched ideas are voted on by the attendees and teams are formed by the top voted ideas.
11:00pm – Teams break off to a bar, coffee shop, hotel lobby, someone’s apartment and begin discussing strategy for building their startup over the weekend (We cannot serve anything at this hour)
11:30pm – Venue closed for the evening
Saturday
8:30am – Doors open and teams begin working
9:00am – Breakfast/Tea/Coffee served
10:00am – Teams continue working and mentors start arriving.
11:00am – Teams better start coding by now or you may not have a product to demo on Sunday
1:00pm – Lunch is served and presentations/announcements/ and a talk by a guest speaker.
2:00pm – Teams continue coding, work on business plans, customer validation
8:00pm – Dinner is served
11:30pm – Venue closed for the evening
Sunday
8:30am – Doors open
9:00am – Breakfast/Tea/Coffee is served; Teams continue working
11:00am – Teams should have a live splash page up with an email capture and a simple blog and they should provide 1 paragraph writeup, logo, twitter id, Facebook URL and website address to facilitator for a writeup of the startups being built at Startup Weekend.
1:00pm – Lunch will be served
2:00pm – Gut check. Start prepping for presentations.
5:00pm – Final presentations of all startups being built.
7:30pm – Panel will vote. Awards
8:00pm – Appetizers/Snacks will be served after the event for those that want to stay and socialize.
Startup Weekend Mumbai in less than 24 hours – Things to remember
We have little less than 24 hours to kick off the Startup Weekend Mumbai.
Venue Details BigRock and starting work on some awesome new startups and hacking some code!
Here’s a few things to remember:
- Think of some ideas you want to pitch. You will have 60 seconds to do a verbal elevator pitch of your idea – no ppts, or other aids. If time permits, you may be able to pitch more than one idea.
- Your idea cannot be your existing startup that has launched. Startup Weekend is where people gather to take ideas and transform them into startups, not promote your existing startup.
- Bring whatever you think you’re going to need to work, e.g. a laptop, paper, pens, mobile phone, etc.
- If your idea doesn’t get enough votes, don’t worry. Join another team and work with others on their idea.
- Please try to be inclusive and not turn people away from joining your team unless your team size is over 5 people.
- The Twitter Hashtag for Startup Weekend Mumbai will be #swmum – Please use it when tweeting about the event.
- The Flickr tag for Startup Weekend Mumbai will be swmum and startup weekend so please add these tags to any photos you upload to Flickr.
- If you purchased a student ticket, please bring a valid student photo id with you or you may be denied access to the event.
- We need more designers so please pass on the word to your network and tell them to come.
- The event will be WiFi enabled.
- On Friday we will most likely end around 11:30 or Midnight so make sure you have travel accommodations in place. Startup Weekend cannot provide travel accommodations or taxis. This is your responsibility.
- Dinner will be provided on Friday evening by BigRock.
- If you have a Tata Photon or other data card, bring it with you. You never know when you may need it.
Doors will open at 5:30pm on Friday and there will be networking and mingling till 7pm.
We will start the event at 7pm sharp.
We will start pitches by 8:15pm.
If you have questions, please post a comment below.
