Winnows Proto.in roar at IBM India Innovation Forum, Bangalore

Yesterday Vijay and myself were at the IBM Innovators forum on Official invitation from Seshadri Shanker, VP Strategy of IBM, Our basic objective for attending this event was to create an awareness and more momentum for Proto among the VC community of IBM.s circles. And guess what ? we ended the day accomplishing more than that. Here is how we did it all !

The morning we landed late at the Leela Hotel (Courtesy Kingfisher) and already Shanker and Claudia had already finished their key note . Promod Haque of Managing partner , Norwest Venture Partners was delivering his address to an elite gathering of less than 50 high powered members. The gathering was comprised of India’s top VC’s , top brass of IBM, some from TIE, few technologist from the funded companies and a fair sprinkle of Press. Morning was all about the display of the VC success of NVP and his funded companies. Then there was a presentation by TIE head of Delhi on the efforts by TIE in the entrepruneur space. Ravi Narayanan – CEO, Mentor Partners has been a patron and evangelist of PROTO since its inception..As soon as Ravi took the podium from Prof. Mahabala, I knew PROTO was on the block and we continued the evangelising part for the next 10 minutes to the entire crowd.Unfortunately Vijay missed it as he was busy on a meeting with NASSCOM . So it was upto Ravi and me to field all the questions and doubts. PROTO couldnt have asked for a much better pitch.

Kiruba was right that some of the best conversations happen at the corridors . I got the opportunity to initiate On corridor offline discussions with Promod of NVP and Andrew Clark – Director , IBM VC Group , Dravid Seetharam -VP of IBM, Prashid Gupta – Program Director IBM Corporate Development , Samir Kumar – Inventus Capital Partners and Jose Marques – Upstream Ventures about PROTO and the responses for the event was overwhelmingly positive. Every VC we met in this event encouraged the concept of PROTO (us) serving the best of india in a platform as a great opportunity for the VC’s as well as for startups to gain access to funding. Stepping out from my shoes of an organizer of the event PROTO and hearing the feedback from the VC’s our beliefs are reinforced at the great value that we are striving to create for Indian Entrepruneurs in Chennai.

Vivek Shenoy – CTO Elinanetworks and Kartikeya Iyer – Atlantis Computing were some of the technologist that we ended up meeting and they seem fairly aware of PROTO and i hope we see more of them in the forthcoming PROTO edition as particpants.

Sumanth – CEO , InstaCol had a suggestion to host the forthcoming PROTO in bangalore and we have nothing against it . But from the kind of efforts i see that is going into PROTO, not just the online exchange but the coordination and communication and the trips and the meetings that happen offline, the organizers of the next edition of PROTO really need to step up several notches with dedicated effort as the event needs greater commitment and team work. Any takers with that dedication are always welcome to associate with us in this event current edition to get the fair picture of how things are being done.

Awesome dinner hosted by IBM with a tete with Mohammed Naseem, IBM healthcare vertical and Drew Clark and Ravi alongwith me and vijay. Later at the airport vijay shared the great news that Subex systems and Nasscom are very enthusiastic to help PROTO. What more could the winnows ask for ?

Tags: Promod, Haque, Norwest, Venture, Partners, Andrew, Clark, Director, IBM VC Group, Dravid, Seetharam, VP, IBM, Seshadri, Shanker, Strategy, IBM, Prashid, Gupta, program, Director, Corporate, Development, Samir, Kumar, Inventus, Capital, Partners, Jose, Marques, Upstream, Ventures, Vivek, Shenoy, CTO, Elinanetworks, Kartikeya, Iyer, Atlantis, Computing, Sumanth, InstaCol, Ajit, Nevis, Networks, Ravi, Narayan, Mentor, Partners, Vijayanand, Proto, Syed, Razik, Leela, Bangalore, Nevis Networks

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