I have been looking around for startup communities within India for quite a while now, without much luck. Web searches returned results that didn’t really refer me to what I wanted. This content vertical (within India) is rather young, and the community is yet to promote their best of the best online sources. So finally, I relied on old school word-of-mouth (thanks Girish!), which landed me at proto.in.

Proto.in is driven by this underlying philosophy:

Proto.in is the startup event that happens in India, inviting entrepreneurs from within and around the subcontinent to participate, share, discuss and draw strength from the growing entrepreneurial demand and knowledge base that is created, in an effort to create world-class product leaders from the region. Proto is about celebrating entrepreneurship, and encouraging it where it matters the most - at the startup level!

1. To Showcase Innovative technology products borne out of India
2. To Encourage, grow and create entrepreneurial awareness
3. To create a community of startup entrepreneurs, who can grow in strength and numbers, drawing wisdom from each other.
4. To act as a bridge between well-established companies, veteran entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, analysts, journalists, professionals and grass-root entrepreneurs.

..and is run by Vijay Anand, with the help of a large, and growing volunteer base from all around India. The format is similar to BarCamp, DemoCamp (one of which I attended), and in some sense, to the HackDay’s hosted here at Yahoo!

Navigating through the site, the two most useful sources of information include their blog, and the hosted event pages (2007-1, 2007-2, 2008-1). Much of this, however, get hidden within the main site, including the highly valuable company profiles, which I am yet to deep-dive into.

The next startup event is to be hosted at Bangalore (my hometown!), in January 2009, with nominations closing Dec 10, 2008.

The charter of the community is highly encouraging. Having made some key initial contributions, they promise to continue being an important online (and offline) hub for startups in India.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 at 1:32 am