India’s 10 Best Technology Product Startups Headstart Launches with Honeywell a “Startup Collaboration Platform”

January 12, 2009 - HeadStart & Compute 2009 an annual conference focused on technology and innovation was organized by HeadStart Foundation & Association of Computing Machinery. Kallol Borah Founder & Director, HeadStart Foundation announced the names of the ten best product technology startups in India. The selected startups are CashNxt, Entrip, SnappyFingers, Alertpedia, Verismo, IndusGeeks, WisdomTap, TringMe, Artin Dynamics, MeshLabs.

Honeywell announced its participation in HeadStart’s Industry- Startup Collaboration Platform .It combines online and offline media to let startups and corporatism jointly identify, pursue and execute business. This collaboration platform opens a new chapter in the innovation ecosystem for the first startups to have an opportunity to directly access large corporates as it reduces sales cycles and enlarges opportunity for them.

Speaking on the occasion, Harsha Angeri Director Strategy and New Initiatives, Honeywell said,”Honeywell thrives on innovation to meet its customer needs globally. In today’s world, innovation can come from various avenues & it is imperative for global companies to establish a network of sourcing mechanisms to access this. A structured platform for startups to showcase innovations & work with Honeywell on its customer’s pain points will create a new value stream for both.”

Dr Vishy Poosala, Head of Bell Labs India, Alcatel-Lucent, while speaking on entrepreneurship within corporates, said ”Companies - big and small - have to continue to innovate year-after-year, or they will fall prey to others, most likely to the two anonymous entrepreneurs working hard in a garage somewhere in Bangalore or Sunnyvale”.

Also addressing the media, Business Development Director Philips, Mr Naveen Kulkarni said “New ventures are no more restricted to start-ups alone. Philips has a strong focus on corporate venturing and innovation is the mantra. This is so more relevant in healthcare where innovative solutions are made up of complex pieces ranging from electronics to specialised medical domain expertise and it is almost like putting pieces in a jigsaw puzzle except that there is nice gating process to ensure success be it a spin-up or spin-in.”

Giving his perspective on the venture capitalist scenario;Mr. Harish Gandhi, Executive Director Canaan Partners, “The start-up ecosystem has been developing rapidly in the past couple of years. While in India we are no-where near the kind of ecosystem that exists in Silicon Valley, the basic building blocks of mentors, incubators and investors are coming together just fine. Companies like HeadStart are going beyond simply bringing together start-ups and investors, and are attempting to bring about closer integration with researchers and corporates which is crucial for the sustenance and growth of innovation.”

HeadStart &Compute event brought together all the stakeholders of the innovation ecosystem - entrepreneurs/startups, corporate adopters of new products and technology, venture capitalists and angel investors, researchers and academia, industry professionals - at one place to showcase innovation and network.

Last years funded companies were benefited by access to investors & funding eg, Mango Technologies also public visibility & profiling in media eg:TringMe and access to prospective customers.

About the Event

The two day long camps for both the days comprising close to 20 sessions keynote addresses, live demos of new products, panel discussions, technology tutorials, research presentations, investor meets and an open space (called the Demo pit) where 40 of the best products from start ups and industry showcased. It was attended by energetic and enthusiastic participants who shared their knowledge with others in the community.

More than 40 corporates, 100+ startups, 20 VCs and 350 attendees from across the country and a variety of organizations participated in the event with their insatiable desire of learning by sharing with similar minds.

The event was sponsored by HP, Philips, Alcatel Lucent, Yahoo and Honeywell and is organised by the HeadStart Foundation, an association of technology entrepreneurs who also run the very popular Startup Saturdays (www.startupsaturday.in) across 5 cities in India, and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Bangalore, which is a very active unit of ACM Worldwide (www.acm.org), the largest association of professionals and researchers in computing.

About HeadStart Foundation

The HeadStart Foundation is a not-for-profit organization run by volunteers and full time professionals to create and promote the innovation ecosystem in India. The objective is to drive customer adoption of new products and technology in India, enable investments in startups by angels and venture capitalists and provide access to technology domain expertise to startups in partnership with the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) Bangalore. Mr. Kallol Borah is the founder and spokesperson. Kallol himself is an entrepreneur and thought leader in the innovation space.

The details are on http://headstart.in/2008/08/08/headstart-2009-nomination-form/

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