14th March 2009 saw the American Center in Delhi host the 3rd Startup Saturday Delhi event. Carefully screened and chosen were the presenters for this edition, after a not so enthusiastic response to the 2nd edition.
Michael Macy, the Cultural Attache at the American Center took to the stage before the invited speakers got there. He challenged the young people in the audience to use the recessionary period we’re in to find innovative solutions to problems that we face daily. He cited a few examples of companies that were started during recessions to being very large powerhouses today - including Microsoft. This was a small involvement from the hosts of SSD, and it proves that they are always willing to support such initiatives.
Next onto the podium was Mrigank Tripathi along with a demo of whats being done at his 2 month old venture - VoiceTap. The idea behind VoiceTap was conceived sometime in January and they have already reached Alpha. Mrigank expects to hit Beta in the next 4 weeks. Now for the concept, VoiceTap is a service that is trying to create a connect between Knowledge Experts and Knowledge Seekers. It is a platform where you get to speak and interact directly with experts: people who have ‘made it’ in the field that is relevant to you. The service will be delivered over the phone – and the calls will be scheduled based on the interest levels shown in that particular call - the level being judged by way of numbers registering as knowledge seekers as well as the curiosity in terms of questions being put up for the expert. They have partnered with one of the largest conference call providers for the backend technology, since getting a larger set of people onto a single conference call is quite expensive.
Link to Mrigank’s presentation about VoiceTap
Mrigank faced a lot of questions from the attentive audience. He identified revenue models under these heads - premium service where subscribers can take a 1-1 call for any subject, pay per minute, in-call advertising and sponsored calls. Authenticity of the experts and live calls were the basic USP upon which Mrigank hinges the success of VoiceTap. This link has the answers to a lot of questions about VoiceTap.
Next up was Wirkle co-founder Tarun Mittal. Wirkle is a products and services company in the mobile phone domain. He started off with a demo of few products in the Mobile VAS domain. They have an excellent product in the Mobileum platform. Its a patent pending platform, and is extensively provided to others who can build their products and services over it. This was first developed for the GSMA Mobile Congress, held annually in Barcelona, Spain. This is a platform thats based on the client-server architecture. The server collates information from a number of sources, and distributes it to the clients existing in the form of hand-held devices. Tarun went on to demo a few other applications in the social media space that work over the mobile phone device. Next in his kitty were applications for the iPhone. There is this special touch sensitive application available from Wirkle, that makes a “Kiss” sound when the iPhone is placed near human skin. Or at least thats where everybody could test it.
Link to Tarun’s presentation about Wirkle
Once the product demo was over, Tarun delved into the formation of Wirkle. The history has it that 3 friends working in US decided to come back to India and venture out on their own. Their exposure to an advanced mobile phone market in the western half of globe inspired them to start a products and services company in the hand-held device market. And thus was born “Wirkle”.
This happens when you come out of an interesting event. This blog post has already gone past a readable length. I am going to terminate it here. And modify the title to say that this is part I of the entire coverage from 3rd edition of Startup Saturday Delhi. Will be posting the second half in a day or two.
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