Entrepreneurship Central

In a nutshell, Nasscom's Product Conclave in Bangalore on November 7 and 8 celebrated entrepreneurship. The event, which saw over 1,400 delegates getting together, is one of Asia's biggest conferences for technology entrepreneurship. Deputy Chief Photographer Deepak G. Pawar and Associate Editor Goutam Das met the start-up founders and their backers.Here, Srinivas B.A., a Project Delivery Specialist with Bangalore-based Tenet Technetronics displays an unmanned aerial vehicle that the company assembles. The machine is capable of conducting aerial photography and can be used by security agencies.

Som Mittal, President of IT industry lobby Nasscom, was in Bangalore on Wednesday for the Nasscom Product Conclave. Inevitably, the media peppered him with questions on US President Barack Obama's re-election, asking him if the win was a negative for India. Mittal played down the impact, preferring instead, to talk about a more positive trend. He pointed out that there are 400-500 technology start-ups launching in India every year.

J. Surjith Singh of Chennai-based Niqotin explains his Rural Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) product, which is meant for small Indian businesses. The software is available in many regional languages and the company recently won a Nasscom award for innovation. Start-ups, says Singh, are all about experiments. That perhaps explains his designation: Chief Experiment Officer.

Chamath Palihapitiya is the founder and Managing Partner of Silicon Valley-based venture fund, The Social+Capital Partnership. A former Facebook executive, he has managed to get his fund backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, among others. Palihapitiya has, thus far, announced investments in two Indian entities: AngelPrime, a business incubator, and Ezetap, a Bangalore-based mobile payments company.

Abhijit Bose, co-founder and CEO of mobile payments company Ezetap, is all smiles after raising capital from venture fund The Social+Capital Partnership. Ezetap has designed a small credit-card swiping device that can be attached to a smartphone and turned into a point-of-sale machine. The day may not be far when this kind of device is brought to your doorstep by the neighbourhood pizza delivery boy.

Sharad Sharma (left), Chair of Nasscom's Product Forum, and Krishnakumar Natarajan, CEO of Mindtree, relax after a hectic day of parleys at the Product Conclave. Sharma notes that India's software product industry has started to grow exponentially with a few companies now enjoying valuations of about a billion dollars.

Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi, shares his recipe for success. The mobile ad network company currently enjoys a valuation of about a billion dollars. InMobi employs a number of ex-entrepreneurs. "Their passion for the job is unmatched," says the CEO. By employing them and other experienced people, the company has pursued an aggressive product and global expansion strategy.

Delegates at Nasscom's Product Conclave, many of them from start-ups, passionately spoke about their companies to anyone who was willing to listen. Naturally, they tried to impress venture capitalists the most.

Sreekumar K.R. is the co-founder and COO of Mashinga, a start-up. Mashinga has developed a touch-based "surface computing" screen that can be embedded onto a restaurant's table, for instance. Customers can pick from the menu options and also play games while waiting for an order to be delivered. Mashinga, incubated at Kochi's Startup Village, has been mentored by Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.

Jagat Iyer (left) and Chandni Raheja, founders of Bangalore-based start-up EveryCrave, take time out from deliberations at the Nasscom Product Conclave. EveryCrave is a social commerce platform to buy, refer and sell.

Raghav Sood, a standard X student from The Shri Ram School in Gurgaon, Haryana, has developed 10 apps that have cumulatively been downloaded 100,000 times. Most are gaming apps that run on the Android platform. Sood did not stop at that - the wonder boy has also written a book on developing apps on augmented reality. Nasscom invited him to its Product Conclave as a speaker.

Valerie R. Wagoner, an American, moved to India a few years back to start ZipDial, a mobile marketing platform that works on missed calls. The company, which was set up about two years back, has customers such as P&G, Unilever, Cadbury, Disney and Mahindra using its service. Companies typically advertise a number where a consumer can leave a missed call. Thereafter, the company uses the mobile number to engage with the consumer. Wagoner expects to clock a million dollars in revenue this year.

Mukund Mohan, an entrepreneur and investor, was among the most active people at the Nasscom Product Conclave, networking with fellow venture capitalists one moment, and mentoring start-ups the next. Mohan has provided seed-stage funding to seven start-ups in India, and hold your breath, 27 in Silicon Valley.