Tag Archives: startups

Desiwiki… community aggregated resource for startups & entrepreneurs

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Desiwiki is a wiki that aggregates resources/info about how to set up and run a startup in India. Started by Prabhu Subramanian (who blogs at DesiStartups), Desiwiki is trying to leverage the power of community knowledge sharing in a structured way. Most people who run startups & also write a blog, would have at some time or the other, blogged about the task of running their companies. I have done that extensively on my personal blog– here’s a post about how to tackle red-tape in the ROC office, here’s another one about putting together a simple, low cost conference room for your resource constrained startup. Satish Talim (who runs the Pune Ruby group) has an EXCELLENT series of blog posts detailing the entire process of registering an IT company in India… I am sure a quick google search will throw up really useful resources elsewhere on the Indian blogosphere as well. These resources if bunched together could be very helpful to first time, budding entrepreneurs. Hence getting people to aggregate their experience on the wiki is a great idea.

The wiki can become a valuable resource for information about legal, financial, operational aspects of running a company, specially in the initial phases.

So if you have something to share, register here for an account on the wiki and start contributing… Needless to say, this is not an advertising platform, so any surreptitious attempts to market yourself (or your company) is likely to get an immediate cold-shoulder by the administrators.

I just wish the wiki had a more imaginative name … the word ‘desi‘ sounds not just sickening, but also downright misleading as well.

TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge 2008 announced!

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2.jpgCanaan Partners (in association with TiE) has rolled out the second edition of the TiE-Canaan Entrepreneurial Challenge, a national level business plan competition for early stage entrepreneurs in India. The business plans entered in the contest will be evaluated by a selection panel. Eight entries will be short-listed for mentoring before the final presentation to the jury. The top three winners will be announced in mid June. A bunch of goodies awaits the winners –

– Post event mentoring for 3 months by NASSCOM, Canaan Partners & members of the Jury.
– Direct participation in the Deal Flow Session at TiEcon Delhi 2008
– Coverage in print & electronic media, enabling them to build awareness about their companies & products

All the eight shortlisted entries will have access to investors from TiE, Indian Angel Network & other early stage investors during the final event.

The challenge is open to early stage Indian entrepreneurs who have already incorporated their companies in the areas of Technology or Services (i.e. IT, internet, software, telecom, mobile, education, BPO, KPO etc). This is where you can download the business plan template and this is where it needs to be uploaded for submission into the contest.

The previous edition of this contest was held in 2006 (which make this a bi-annual event) and its winners included Infozech Software, Vegayan & 6 Dee.