People Speak — Meeting The Progressing Founders

I run the Bangalore Innovation Meetup group and today I tried a new location to host the Meetup. The location was Starbucks Cafe, Koramangala and I reached there by 6.30 pm and waited till 7pm when the Meetup was to start. I was anxious as for last few Meetup no one turned up. Having a Frappechino I was getting ready to write a blog and spend the rest of the time alone as one of the confirmed participants for the Meetup was unable to attend.

http://meetu.ps/e/.tldsnmywgblc/tjb37/d

But then I got a call from someone asking about my Meetup and when I saw there were two people Vikas & Jyothi who were sitting across the glass partition of the Cafe. First they came and as we were talking two more participants joined - Rajan and Mithun. And we kept on talking till late in the evening. And here I am recounting about the founders and about my interaction with them.

The Founders

Mithun Shaunbagh, Founder & CEO, SkewCode

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mithunshanbhag

SkewCode is a Startup in Education space where they want to help youngsters get quickly learn and get started out on foundational software technologies like Html, JavaScript, Python and Electronics.

To me Mithun was a very pragmatic , focussed and passionate founder who has just come to Bangalore and launching his Startup by May. His vision is to popularize the concept of Workshops as a way to learn and share knowledge. The differentiator which he wants to offer is a way to enable the young minds to learn the key software concepts in a storytelling format with examples and exercises through an intensive 2 day workshops. A passionate education and an ex Microsoft employee, had many good suggestions for me and for me the key takeaways were that we should learn to prioritize and focus on our goals in our life. And we should be driven with these focused goals.

Rajan Chandi, Founder Classmint

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajanchandi

A serial entrepreneur, hacker, an avid reader and a nerdy innovator.
He is a clear thinker and a very strong personality. I called him nerdy innovator because his next initiative is a Medium clone for WordPress through which he will start his next blog. I can relate with him because I too embarked on such an idea but was too impatient or lazy to complete. He is well read and has clear stand on the views he holds, but he also has lots of valuable advice and anecdotes from various books which even we were amazed and found difficult to keep up with. I learnt many things from him. First was that for a Startup blogging can be a great way not only to share your startup journey but also a grey medium to build customer engagement and build an audience for your idea or product.

It is also important to prototype first and write your idea and the problem its trying to fix. It will help us to be clear on what problem we are trying to solve and also how important is that problem that our solution is going to address their pain point and are there already existing solutions. And also working continuously on our idea shall we master it and develop our skills.

With 40000+ subscribers and 2Lakh+ notes for Rajan Classmint is a moderate success and for someone who rejected Facebook buyout offer of his Startup Hireplug, I can only say what a great talented innovator he is. I am sure I will be interacting with him soon and will have lot to learn and am eagerly waiting on his Medium theme.

Vikas - Founder Bluemik

Still in his beta phase and just 2-3 months into his Startup journey, he wants to rejuvenate the B2B services sector with a Marketplace by bringing in much needed transparency and exposure for the mid sized businesses which they espouse for. With a background in Marketing and a founding team, he is still exploring the sector and is planning to start from Video/Digital Marketing segment which is still fragmented and if done properly have great potential.

Though finding execution of the idea as a key challenge but with his passion and commitment I am sure on the right path. One thing which he said was that as individuals sometime following the traditional approach of doing things can be helpful as that takes the baggage of analyzing everything and let's us to move forward.

During our discussion Rajan put a point of using fiver as a way of getting things done at a low price. Though in Indian context it may not be the right solution to get help but still for many cases it is a cost effective solution.

Jyothi - Entrepreneur, Fabricmonde, Incubating NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore

http://www.fabricmonde.com/

It was one of the most impact full Idea that I got from the evening. Though its genesis is from a Self Help Charitable Organization but now the Startup works to achieve social good which wants to connect weavers and their creations in a direct to Customer channel where by providing a One Room Franchise model and creating a network of loyal customer base they will help women and small scale entrepreneurs to setup with one time initial investment and do a month on month refresh of stock over a 6 month period.

By sourcing the saris and other textile products from weavers and directly selling to small scale one room distributors Fabricmonde aims to create an impact full social enterprise which involves community based participation and help to serve the grass root weavers for whom weaving has become a unsustainable profession.

From her I learnt a very important lesson of writing down our thoughts on paper rather than typing it out on computer. As it helps to get much required flow of though which sometimes may not come while writing online. For me it adds an additional level of review which I may never do while writing online.

Finally

I can say meeting these talented founders at their various stages of Startup journey I learned a lot and eager to see their progress to succeed.