One Pune, and our decision to startup here

I've talked a lot about Pune and the startup environment here, but I don't think I've ever actually told the full story about why we chose Pune in the first place. So here is the story...

Graphical Summary

For those of you who don't want to read my boring blog, please have a look at 'our trip' Startup: A Mahrati Adventure' below: It shows the different destinations on our journey to Pune, has photos and all the important background infos - in each of the relevant locations where the action happened. Enjoy!

Background

The decision was made: Nick and I, still at Imperial College back then in June 2007, were going to go to some 'cool place that is cheap to live, to learn about web applications and develop our ideas, whilst discovering a new country, culture'.

At first we wanted to lie on the beach in Thailand, on some island and satellite internet, but that idea was soon replaced for going to India. Majorly influential in that decision was my good friend Sid, whom I studied in Zurich with, and an amazing book called Shantaram. Of course, the fact that India is more more IT savvy, a booming world economy and inevitably one of the most important countries of the 21st century kind of played a role as well :-)

Why we chose Pune

Everyone in Europe had heard of this IT hub called Bangalore. Also famous were megacities like Mumbai or Delhi. But where should we actually go to try to startup, without having been to India before at all?

So we talked to people, shortlisted a couple of cities, and made a classical decision analysis (although not in too formal a way). After consciously deciding against any of the megacities, and requiring some sense of IT-savvyness, we were left with Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad.

Next, we decided what it was we were really looking for in a place, and came up with a couple of dimensions: IT-savvyness (they all kinda met), cost of living, a young crowd, ideally with lots of students for us to socialise with, decent climate, the potential to be a creative place, closeness to places of interest (beach, interesting city, etc), reputation of the beauty of girls. I think that was more or less it.

Then we just compared and assigned scores to each of the cities - based on what we could generalise from friends, news, blogs, and other statistics we could find. One blog, I can't find it anymore because the number of blog posts about 'pune', 'startup' and 'silicon valley' have just exploded in the last year, was also very influential, where some guy basically said how, and why, Pune could become Indias silicon valley.

So basically, on the metrics that we cared about, Pune won hands down. I would guess that these are the kind of metrics the 'average young web entrepreneur' would care about.

Arriving in Pune, and overall impression

I've written about my thoughts about Pune as a startup hub many a times before, and have passionately advocated Pune abroad in Europe. Having said that, I would say that it took us about two to three months or so to actually settle in, get in touch with the Startup Community, meet the right people, and get involved. When we came, we knew noone, and didn't even know about the buzzing startup community I so passionately write and care about now. But, thanks to the internet and POCC, we finally 'made it'.

So. Has Pune disappointed us? Not in the least. Would I do it again? Absolutely. Is it 'the place to be'? Time will tell - but I have all reason to be optimistic!

As I keep telling my friends and family at home: One day, in 15 years, i will tell my children that we just got lucky, and ended up in Pune - the right place at the right time!

Startup Cinema in Pune

Startup Communities

One of the most important aspects for a successful Startup, I think, is a healthy startup community. Having nice office buildings and IT Parks and tax subsidies doesn't seem to work (of course not, duh!). 

It's those random events, chance encounters and unexpected creative discussions (e.g. with fellow entrepreneurs, but also with your mother or grandmother...) that happen casually in a community, I claim, which can lead to those positive freak events which propells startups towards success. 

In pune, this community is nicely organised by the POCC - Pune Open Coffe Club - a great platform for Pune (and beyond) based (mainly IT/Internet) startups to network, exchange information, ask questions and organise meetups.

Startup Cinema

POCC is great, definitly 'made my stay' and is one of the core reasons I like being in Pune, but I find that often the POCC meetups are not casual enough. That's why we decided to initiate 'Startup Cinema' - a casual forum and get-together for pune startups (POCC members basically) to get together, have a casual chat, watch a movie (we have a projector :-) ) , have a beer.

In fact, Startup Cinema is the product of one of those casual encounters, when Freeman, Santosh and I talked about BookEazy and felt there was a need to push 'cool' or 'indie' cinema.

So, yesterday, Thursday Nov, 6th, we kicked off Startup Cinema with 'Pirates of the Silicon Valley' (what else!). A good number of people turned up - though not as many as 'signed up' (next time, please don't sign up if you don't think you're coming, or let us know in advance so that someone else can fill your seat). 

Thanks to some slight delay in setting up the movie, people had some time to chat and get to know each other. Afterwards, I think I called for a tidy up too early, would have been nice to sit, chill and hang around for a bit longer. 

I think next time, I'll leve some time in the beginning to just sit and chat with some music, and a bit more time afterwards before wrapping up. 

Hopefully StartupCinema becomes a regular routine for the community here in Pune, and maybe catches on beyond!