Roundtable Recap: April 17 – High-Octane Energy In Pune

On April 17, I was in Pune for a 1M/1M live event. Pune has become a hotbed of product entrepreneurship in India, and I was curious to see what kinds of ventures are cooking there. Well, Persistent Systems and IncuCapital hosted a highly interactive and engaging session. Here are the companies that pitched at the roundtable:

EzeeBank
First up, Manoj Dharap presented EzeeBank, a core banking solution for credit co-operative societies. Manoj has deep domain knowledge in the CCS market segment and has designed a solution that addresses the missing real-time data dashboard functionality of the industry. Today, the financial picture of a CCS is updated only once a month in a batch process.

Manoj is experiencing a long sales cycle of close to 12 months, but he has already created a sustainable company that has revenues and profits. He is exploring outside financing, but my concern is that unless the growth rate accelerates, this particular business may not fit the venture model. On the other hand, it can be a perfectly fine owner-owned-and-operated business.

Indian In A Box
Next, Ashish Sondhi pitched Indian In A Box, a retail concept for take-out Indian food. Ashish has three outlets in Pune, but wants to open one in London. Besides the fact that he is from London, I could not figure out why, instead of expanding the franchise in India, it makes sense to jump to London. The business is very different in London, and my feedback was that investors want a repeatable business model. Ashish wants to raise money and scale rapidly. For that to happen, he needs to show investors how his India model scales, without introducing a random London factor in the business.

Quadmo
Then, Rohit Rawal discussed Quadmo, an employee reward and recognition SaaS system for large enterprises. Rohit has already developed good validation in the Indian market, and is able to penetrate some sizeable accounts. In one of those accounts, Quadmo is integrating their software with SuccessFactors. Rohit is interested in exploring a U.S. go-to-market strategy, and I advised him to try to recruit a channel partner like SuccessFactor or Taleo with major presence in the talent management space. Since Rohit is a 1M/1M premium member, I will help him execute on this strategy. I also advised him to apply for the Microsoft Startup Challenge grant in the cloud category.

DIYComputerscience.com
We also had Parag Shah present DIYComputerscience.com, an intriguing concept for teaching foundational computer science through an online mechanism. In India, there is an abundance of programmers, but most of them lack a foundational computer science education. Parag’s pitch was somewhat all over the place, and he needs to focus on one market segment and a corresponding business model that can then be validated.

My hunch is that he should focus on the corporate training market, and train programmers for small and medium companies that lack in-house training departments. Most of the larger IT companies in India have some form of in-house training departments. But for the SME segment, this may be a value proposition that he can monetize. Two CEOs of product companies in the audience offered to validate this on the spot, and Parag had a rather productive afternoon from the look of it.

Wish Them Today
Last up was Pratik Rokade pitching Wish Them Today, a paid SMS birthday reminder service. While the service is useful, my impression is that it is very easy to copy and is likely to get subsumed into some other product’s feature. I advised Pratik to keep his job, and while it is OK for him to play with this idea, I would not jump into this particular opportunity with both feet.

Parag Shah’s DIYComputerscience.com was chosen the best business of those presented by audience members through a poll on the 1M/1M Facebook page. Congratulations!

Overall, the most promising company in this group is Quadmo, although I also liked EzeeBank and DIYComputerScience. The last of these needs a lot of work to extract and polish the diamond in the rough, but it may be a worthwhile endeavor.

Our next online roundtable will be held on April 28 and will focus on entrepreneurs from the Mountain States region of the U.S. Recordings of previous online roundtables are all available here. You can register for the upcoming roundtables here.

This segment is a part in the series : Roundtable Recap
. March 25 – A Mixed Bag Of Advice . April 1 – Bootstrapping Tips . April 8 – A Focus On E-Commerce . April 15 – Small Is OK; The Goal Is Profitability . April 22 – The Original Runners . April 29 – Finding The Right Direction . May 6 – Defining Value Proposition . May 20 – Validation, Validation, Validation . May 27 – Is The Venture Worth Your Time? . June 3 – Defining Market Segments . June 10 – Efficient Targeting . June 17 – Online Education Startups . June 24 – Three Startups That Can Hit One Million Dollars . July 1 - Get Your Pricing Model Validated . July 8 - The EJ Methodology . July 15 - A Market Of Late Adopters . July 22 - Bootstrap Using Services . July 29 - Startups In Malaysia . August 5 - Paying Customers =>Validation =>Valuation . August 19 - Niche E-Commerce Is Great For Bootstrapping . August 26 - 85%-90% Of Search Traffic Comes From Organic Search . September 2 - Find High Velocity Channels . September 9 - Open Opportunities In Cloud Computing And Rural BPO . September 16 – 5 Cloud Computing Opportunities for Entrepreneurs . September 23 - Do Not Spray And Pray . September 30 - Investors Don't Fund Broad Ideas . October 7 - Try To Get At Least $2M Pre-Money In Seed Round Valuation . October 14 - Professional Investors Do Not Invest In $20 Million Markets . October 21 - Bootstrapping Comes In Many Flavors . October 28 – Convert Potential Competitors To Partners . November 4 - Premium Lounge Sneak Preview . November 11 - African Tech Entrepreneurs Emerging . November 18 - Not Coming To The Rescue Of Victory . December 2 - Niche Marketplace Businesses Can Be Interesting . December 9 - Where Should You Raise Money? . December 16 - Top 10 Tech Trends To Watch . January 6 - Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends For The Decade . January 13 - Top 10 Online Advertising Trends For The Decade . January 20 - Personalization Remains An Open Problem . January 27 - Non-Dilutive Financing Through Revenue Sharing . February 3 - Indian Entrepreneurs Are Maturing . February 10 - When Keywords Are Competitive . February 17 - Indian Company Plugs Gap In Google’s Enterprise Solution . February 24 - VCs, Angels, Incubators, Accelerators – What Are You Doing With Your Rejects? . March 3 - Spotlight On The Northwest . March 10 - Spotlight On India . March 17 - Spotlight On Latin And Central America . March 24 - 75th Session Spotlights The Midwest . March 31 - Microsoft’s $100,000 India Startup Challenge Grant . April 6 - 1M/1M Announces Important Partnership With MAD Incubator, Malaysia . April 9 - 1M/1M Announces Partnership With TiE Chennai . April 16 - 1M/1M Partners With Indian Angel Network Incubator . April 17 - High-Octane Energy In Pune . April 21- Incubators Are Reaching Out To 1M/1M . April 28 - Guerrilla P.R. & SEO Most Profitable Customer Acquisition Strategies . May 5 - Ownership Matters . May 12 - Two Really Cool Companies . May 19, Making Money From Blogs . May 26 - Twitter, LinkedIn - Why Not Affiliates? . June 2 - 1M/1M And Incubators - What We Have Learned . June 9 - Silicon Valley . June 16 - Exciting Companies Lined Up For Microsoft Startup Grant Finals . June 23 - New Assessment Tool For Entrepreneurs . June 30 - Continued International Participation . July 21 - Crowd Sourced Funding Exchanges - An Emerging Trend . July 28 - Investors And Incubators Need To Look At Pre-Incubation . August 4 - How Do You Bootstrap Freemium Ventures? . August 11 - Menlo Park And The Silicon Valley Renaissance . August 25 - How To Use Twitter For Lead Generation . September 1 - Fall Call To Action . September 8 - A View Into Israeli Start-ups . September 15 - Do Your Homework First . September 22 - How Do You Catalyze A Region’s Entrepreneurship? . September 29 - From Poland To Argentina . October 6 - Dedicated To Steve Jobs, Reinforcing Mission To Restructure Capitalism . October 13 - FREE Is Not A Business Model . October 20 - Non-profits And For-profits . October 27 - Check Out Stanzr . November 3 - VCs Are Not Always Right . November 17 - Business Schools And Early Stage Entrepreneurship . December 1 - 1M/1M Premium Company Freshdesk Wins Funding From Accel Partners . December 8 - Three Open Opportunities For 2012 . December 15 - Web 3.0 And Social Dancing; Romania Emerging . December 22 - Free Apps, Ad-Supported Business Models => Dangerous! . January 5 - ERP Galore . January 12-13 - Spotlight On IIT Kharagpur, India . January 19 - Are Media Sites Fundable? . January 26th - Spotlight On Jacksonville, Florida . February 2 - YCombinator vs. 1M/1M . February 9 - Are You Fundable? . February 16 - What’s Happening In Turkey? . February 23 - Microsoft Israel To Offer 1M/1M Scholarships . March 1 - Strategy Gaps Need To Be Plugged . March 12 - Winners Of Microsoft Israel Scholarships . March 15 - Spotlight On 3 Day Startup Tel-Aviv . April 3 - Rendezvous In Bangalore . April 12 - More From Indian Entrepreneurs . April 19 - Tyranny Of The TAM . April 26 - A Rare Women-Only Session . May 3 - Some Wonderful Opportunities With Corporate Partners . May 10 - BlueSnap-Elance Contest Applications Deadline This Weekend . May 22 - Winners Of TechHub-A&N Media Battle Of The Startups Contest In London Win 1M/1M Scholarships