There is a saying “Nothing in this world is constant except change”, on a similar lines there have been lot of changes in Bangalore; some good, some bad. However, one thing that has drastically changed is the “Public Transportation“. Remember the days when we only had blue colored BMTC buses but now with the introduction of Volvo buses, Public Transportation has gained momentum. Not to forget with the shift of the international airport to a so called remote place, the obvious choice of most of the Bangaloreans is the famous Vajra bus.

BMTC has done a great job by introducing Volvo buses for the right places and also setting the up the right frequency for the right routes e.g ITPL or Electronics City is a place which is filled with software companies and the frequency of Volvo buses is exceptionally great there !!!

Before writing this article, I interacted with a few people[who travel to ITPL] and most of them preferred BMTC over their own cars/bikes. Apart from the normal ways of generating revenue, there are many other areas where BMTC can look for more revenue:

Most of the times, there is FM being played on the radio in the bus but if BMTC manages to tie up with brands, radio can act as a great medium for marketing.It can be used to showcase offers in shopping malls, promote new brands, movies etc. Remember, there is Big Bazaar near ITPL; so this would be much useful in such cases !!!

After the economy tumbled, many were laid off where some of them landed up in jobs out of no better choice. With Indian economy showing early signs of recovery, Volvo bus would make an excellent tool to showcase jobs again through radio or advertisements inside the bus. To make things better, these advertisements can be geo-targetted like buses from ITPL, Electronics City etc. would ONLY carry those ads.

Along with the convenience, the added advantage in Volvo is the additional standing space. The photograph shows the frontal view & there is definitely a big opportunity for Out Of Home advertising. There is space for 2 TVs [one in the frontal entry and other at the back entry]. With OOH growing at 20% annually , this is a big opportunity form BMTC to target the people travelling in the bus.

Photo Credit – Srinidhi Hande

It seems like the unconference styled format is becoming quite popular nowadays and even companies like Wipro have realized it’s potential[both in terms of brand building and tentative recruitment].After a series of WiCamps in cities like Bangalore,Pune,Chennai,Hyderabad; WiCamp returns to Wipro’s home ground -Bangalore 

Pavan Soni ,WiCamp’s chief un-organizer mentions :

Practitioners, Entrepreneurs, VCs, Academicians, Faculties, Students, Freelancers and almost everybody want to learn more on innovation and its applications to their lives. We have seen them all visiting these WiCamps over past few months.

WiCamp has been an informal platform which has helped people come together and share their perspectives on innovation.

Rajesh Moorjani, founder of Propel Software is all praise for the Pune edition of WiCamp for it’s perfect adoption of the unconference culture[More here]

So,interested in WiCamp?

Date and Time – 10th October 2008 [9 AM onwards]
Venue – Wipro Technologies Campus, Electronic City, Bangalore
Theme - Taking Ideas to Market
[Interesting theme,however this should be complimented with speakers who have themselves taken some idea to the market ]

You can register for the event here

After a much needed break(of close to 2 days) from blogging, I am with the back with an event update.

The second meet of the Open Coffee Club again took place at the same venue – Brew Ha Ha and as expected, the turnout was not very high this time.As compared to the 50+ in the first meet , the turnout this time was around 30 but the good part was that there were a lot of new faces in the crowd.May be we should say the word always spreads out and you never know when it spreads like a fire

The agenda this time was “Marketing & Startups“.A universal truth is “A great idea alone is not sufficient to succeed and this is what the meet was all about.We were there to discuss on how to fill the thin gap between Technology and Marketing.As Seth Godin says “Bad marketing cannot be fixed with money” and since, there is always a cash crunch for startups, they cannot afford to be sloppy in their marketing !!! Also, since the main focus was on Marketing, how can we have a discussion on marketing without those crucial set of guys who take our idea to the market There were few marketing people in the crowd and few startups shared the problems they are facing wrt marketing , which is given below:

Ranith – Kapston (Building scalable effective websites):
Ranjith began the discussion with his startup Kapston.Kapston is a startup which is built to help startups.So what is it all about? As Ranjith mentioned “Since , most(or almost all) startups start with a part time idea, many entrepreneurs loose focus due to various reasons(like lack of time,work load etc etc) and this leads to an additional delay for the startup to hit the market”. So does he(and his team solve the problem)? Startups have to go to his company with the requirements and they would provide an end to end solution for them.Their service is only applicable to the Web 2.0 space and this is where even I felt that Web 2.0 is definitely a space which is looked up by everyone.

But the million dollar question is : “How does a startup afford to outsource the complete work since every penny is worth a millions for them” ?

Sharman ( 99% of the startups fail due to bad marketing):
Sharman who does not have a startup of this own shared his views on Business Plans and marketing.Though he does not have a startup of his own, he has helped Entrepreneurs to formulate their business plans. This statement caught the crowd’s attention and this is where Balu(wanna be Serial Entrepreneur) pitched in mentioning “Business Plan should be made by the entrepreneur himself since, he is the person who should know all the numbers(which would come out in the Business Plan). This argument went on for some time after which he closed his talk with 2 important things(on why startups fail) :

Prateek Dayal – Muziboo (Marketing through friends doesn’t work)
Prateek from Muziboo was the one who took the maximum taste from this coffee.He came out with a simple statement “Just like a startup, we don’t want to spend money on marketing”. So , how does he get visitors to his site? He started off by saying that “Friends are good medium when you want to spread the initial word since, you expect the numbers to multiply though your friends but that happens to a very less extent”. He also touched upon Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing which would be useful when there are a considerable no of visitors to his website.There was an open question to an audience as to “How should we do the marketing?” and there were some good suggestions:

I had just one point wrt reviews : “Even though few bloggers may provide some criticising feedback but sometimes this may turn like a “Blessing in disguise” For example : Guy Kawasaki’s venture Truemors was not well accepted by the blogger community and due to this negative publicity, the site got many page views from the readers of those blogs

So, at the end of the day, bloggers just voice out their opinions and it is upto the startup to authenticate and take the valid inputs(and implement them).

Swaroop – Ion (Poster marketing does work):
Swaroop’s startup Ion is an ideal example how “A pain can be transformed into a startup” and Ion – the iPod charger is the best example to prove this point. He shared his experience on how “A simple poster did the trick for Ion”. After coming out with their invention, they(Swaroop and his co-founders) had to market the product and they followed “Poster marketing”. They stood outside a Nike showroom and asked few people randomly about the liking of the posters and finally , they chose the poster which had a majority no of votes !!! Apart from posters and publicizing their product on few blogs, they never spent a single penny on marketing and still they got good sales for their product !!!

If you find their story really interesting , check out some of the posters here

Hitesh & Vikram Mehta – PinkKatalyst:
These guys were true examples of advent of Entrepreneurship in India and just in their early 20′s , it was a nice after-event conversation with them about their startup PinkKatalyst. Since, it was more of a routine conversation, not much to be updated here.You can find more about the company here

Photos from OCC Bangalore:

Photo courtesy : Harinath Pudipeddi

What other bloggers are saying:
[If you have already blogged about the event , kindly add your URL in the comments section]

Harinath Pudipeddi : OCC Meet on 2nd Sept,2007

Vaibhav Pandey : Open Coffee 2nd Meet: What the attendants say?

Swaroop C H : OpenCoffeeClub 2

Other relevant Posts:
Bangalore Open Coffee Club debuts with 50 plus !!!!

There are a couple of events that are scheduled in Bangalore as well as Chennai.Some of them are seasonal events – Open Coffee Club and Blogger’s meet , happening on the 1st & 2nd September,2007 respectively.Some of the other unconferences & conferences are listed below:

a. SearchCamp , Chennai:

After a series of unconferences – BlogCamp , BarCamp , Podworks , WiKi Camp , Proto ; the Knowledge Foundation has another feather in their cap – SearchCamp. As the name suggests, the crux behind the two day unconference is a single word – SEARCH.

What is SearchCamp:
SearchCamp is a two day event aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing(SEM) space to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. This event is the first of its kind in India and will feature workshops, debates and keynotes on the present state and evolution of Search Engine Marketing.

When & where is it held ?
6th and 7th October,2007 in Tidel Park, Chennai. The charges for the event is Rs 500/-

It would also be good learning for people like me who are not so much versed with the SEO fundamentals …..

Interested in SearchCamp ?
If you feel interested than follow the link to register for SearchCamp

b. Oota 2.0 (Let’s talk Technology over lunch) :

If you feel there is a typing mistake than think again Oota means food in Kannada language.Oota is an unconference loosely based on Lunch 2.0 in the Silicon Valley.

What exactly is Oota 2.0?
Oota 2.0 in simple terms is discussing technology over Oota(aka Lunch).So,along with the tasty lunch you also get to meet new and interesting set of people.In a nutshell, Oota 2.0 can be termed as Lunch 2.0 LAN(Lunch Area Network)

When & where is it held?
Friday, September 7th, 12:00PM – 2:00PM in Indiranagar (Venue yet to be finalized) … No charges apart from the your Oota bill

Interested in Oota 2.0 ?
If you feel interested than follow the link or send a mail to oota 2.0 to register for this Grand & Technological Oota

c. Silicon India leadership Summit (Conference) :

As the name suggests Leader Summit would showcase some of the industry leaders speaking on topics ranging from leadership to outsourcing.

The agenda of the summit can be found here

When & where is it held ?
August 31, 2007 at Taj Residency,Bangalore

Interested in the Leadership Summit?
If you feel interested than follow the link to register for the summit. Registration charges is Rs 1000, for more details refer the following

This ends a short round up of some of the Unconferences & conferences happening in Chennai & Bangalore.

After season of unconferences, now comes the season of movies or should I say “Roof Top Movies“ After the success of RTFF in Chennai,the filmi fever would be in Bangalore.

Roof-Top film Fest (RTFF) is a film festival born out of the desire to provide a platform for people to enjoy movies and share their criticism in an open environment. An intense atmosphere will be created for the screening of the films and the discussions that follow. The Roof-Top Film Fest will focus on independent films, short films, cult movies and films that changed the way we looked at cinema.

“Roof Top Film Festivals” are typically where people get together on somebody’s rooftop with a projector and a screen and watch movies which are not very popular in India or not released in multiplexes. These screenings are interspersed by independent film maker’s movies and discussions on the movies screened.

The Bangalore chapter of RTFF is led by Hrish Thota and is scheduled for the month of July,2007.You can register for the RTFF here and do feel free to add the movies , you would like to watch in the movies section.See you all at the Bangalore RTFF…Did this sound,as if I am inviting you for the Oscars or the IIFA Film Festival…huh…

I guess this is one of the most widely covered topics on my blog and regular readers of my blog would feel that this post is repetitive(but at the end of the post your feeling would be different).As we know for each and every phase(be it your job or your venture),networking is needed,right from the time the idea comes to your mind till the time you launch your idea.Initially,you need people with whom you can share your idea ,than you need people to work with you on your idea and once your idea kick starts,you need people to take your idea(company) to a greater height

Keeping these factors in mind,I came up with the following posts
Wanted (Un)like minded soulmates
LinkedIn group for budding Entrepreneurs
From Ideas to Execution

The response was not as per the expectations and I started to Google around such groups that exist in Bangalore.I came across Bangalore Entrepreneur Meetup chapter which has around 143 members but there is very less activity which happens in the group As I have mentioned before,we need a platform for people to express their views and ideas and after giving it some thought,I have created a google group BangaloreBuddingEntrepreneurs , which is open to all people who aspire to be Entrepreneurs or who are Entrepreneurs.

I also have my own selfish motive to create this group:”Due to my shy nature,sometimes it becomes very difficult to express my views(since I don’t know where I should express).The other reason is when you express it in front of wrong person,you would be criticized or ridiculed and this often happens with me”

So,I invite people to join the Bangalore Budding Entrepreneurs group and I would request you to link this post on your blog to spread the word about the group and help more people experience their FREEDOM OF SPEECH and FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION(of IDEAS)

Suggestions and criticism is most welcome(and is highly recommended).