Anyone aware of a startup mentoring network in India. Not a traditional incubation type of setup, but a place where startups can identify mentors who might be able to guide on various issues. Maybe Venturewoods can take the lead here?
Ashwin (vaatsalya.com)
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I just came back from a FOSS startup camp at Anna University – K B Chandrasekhar, MIT, Chennai. They had a bunch of veteran mentors, incl. TT Srinath of TTK industries, who we can choose to be mentor for our business plan. I wish I had such a facility here in Delhi.
Interesting time to setup/consolidate mentoring network.
An unconference circuit like the BarCamp will be a good starting point.
Just thinking aloud.
-Balaji S.
Hi Ashwin,
Nice to hear from you. I visited Vaatsalya.com, definitely a thought whose time has come (actually far overdue)… Our target audiance is almost the same (assuming I end up doing whats in my mind)…thankfully we are not competing, I will engage this guy once he is out of your Clinic and well….
You can reach me on 9820291559 any time you want, would be my pleasure spending some time with you learning things….I love associating with start ups and helping them find passionate partners, business associates, employees. This rather unstructured yet important activity I do under a banner called plugHR. Now don’t go to plughr.com right now….it doesn’t make sense at the moment…….I also love Bapu….have been getting bashed (thankfully verbally) for that more than Bapu would have.
Will look forward to hearing from you…don’t bother about right day….all days are Sundays to me…
Cheers!!!
Ashwin
In Delhi, I am involved with TiE which does a fair bit of this. AT band of angels also, we frequently get a lot of mentoring and advisory requests, and people who have the passion to get engaged do so.
Not that these are sufficient — just wanted to let people know a few sources that do exist.
Manish, would love to see how the two clubs you have mentioned work — can you put me in touch. We had a similar club called tuesday club in delhi, but it kinda fizzled out because people were unwilling to share the overheads…
Alok
Hi Ashwin,
TiE has mentoring network. Many of the TiE charter members are involved with start-up companies as mentors/advisors. Infact we (www.picsquare.com) have Sanjay Swamy as mentor, who is a TiE charter member and we met him in one of the TiE Bangalore event.
TiE-EAP http://www.tiebangalore.org/eap_home.html, initiative of TiE Bangalore chapter is aimed to build a ecosystem to provide access to mentors, VCs, key service providers.
I am not aware of many such organized organization, however there are few groups in Bangalore which works on principle of members helping members.. there are no mentors here but you still get help.. and sometime much more useful for small-small tasks.. i am aware of 2 such groups:
1. Bootstrap Bangalore
2. E-club Bangalore..
Hope this is helpful.
Manish..
http://www.picsquare.com