Bringing startups to Bangalore’s streets

BANGALORE: Krishna Chandran is an animator and in his spare time works with other artists and will soon start selling artwork on his website bechainnagri.com. On Thursday, he had set up a stall as part of the Bangalore Startup Festival’s street art event where he was selling caricatures, paintings, prints and notebooks.
“We’re a bunch of freelancers who passed out of National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.When we had some free time we used to draw funny caricatures and people liked them. So we thought it would be a nice idea to sell them as prints,” Chandran said.
The four-day Startup Festival showcases Bangalore’s startup ecosystem and seeks to strengthen the city’s claims to be one of the world’s great startup locations.
Day one showcased what Indiranagar could bring to the table to build the ecosystem. Over the next three days, similar events will be held in Koramangala, Jayanagar and Palace Grounds. The event will see more than 75 sessions across 60 venues in the city and will feature more than 50 speakers.
Indiranagar 100 ft Road was peppered with art stalls, exhibitions, caricaturists and street musicians organized by Kitsch Mandi, entrepreneurs who bring art on to the street. Laila Vaziralli, founder of Kitsch Mandi, said, “Through this event we want to merge the corporate world and the art world.”
For hardcore technology entrepreneurs there were “Crawls” around the neighbourhood to the offices of some of the city’s most prominent startups. Participants, which included many students, could view the inner workings of the restless world of startups.
“I know how important it is for young guys who are starting out to get up to speed with what’s happening,” said Vijay Sharma of Exotel, which provides cloud-based telephony services to companies and which was one of the companies that participants visited. Sharma feels that festivals are needed to get support from families as well. Many parents today would still like their children working in established companies. “As the startup ecosystem evolves, parents and family will understand what we’re doing,” he adds.
Exotel’s “Crawl” had about 70 visitors coming in, shooting questions and networking to gather support for their ventures. Sharma was also able to catch up with some of his juniors from college who were starting their own ventures. “It’s nice to hear they’re getting out and doing things they love. I’m glad they have questions. It’s important for them to know that the focus should be on getting customers, not on chasing venture capitalists,” Sharma said.
There was a more formal panel discussion in the afternoon, at the Indiranagar Sangeet Sabha, where the hall was packed for a session on cloud technology.
Joydeep Sen Sharma, founder of Qubole, an analytics platform provider, was one of the speakers: “I grew up in Delhi. And after a four year stint in Facebook in the US I wanted to return to India. Bangalore seemed like the best choice. But what I didn’t know then was that there was so much happening here. I was pleasantly surprised that there were so many companies growing here.”
Vladimir Dubovskiy, co-founder of the Startup Festival, appeared happy at the end of the first day. “I’m glad we have been able to pull off so many parallel events at the same time. All the Crawls were packed and so were the halls,” he said.