Bangalore trip

We were at Bangalore for the TiE Summit and that is what this article is all about. I know it is a little late to put this article up, but, better late than never (just love these trite expressions). So, this is how it all began, we had a flight from Mumbai to Bangalore - a Kingfisher Red flight that had the most cramped up seats ever. I have been in ST buses with more leg room. However, the service was excellent and the crew was friendly, I just hated  the seating arrangement.

The Airport:

Now we have all been to Indian Airports and I have been to airports like the Diu Airport. So, knowing the state of the airports in India, I wasn’t expecting much from Bangalore either. In fact I had an image that was painted with Pan spits and stinking airport crew pushing around trolleys that sometimes had a wheel missing. However, what I saw jolted me completely.

I was expecting hutments to show up when we approach the runway, all we saw from the airline were a few farms. Upon landing, we were connected to the bridge, but when we came out, we got to see the beauty. Clean airport with a good design. Easy to get around and very friendly people.

The airport had ample of parking space outside too.

The taxi-wallah’s outside were a little annoying but the airport shuttle service was amazing. They had clean Volvo buses that dropped us right outside Lalit Ashoka.

The Summit:

Finally, about the summit. The first day we entered TiE, we were greeted with blazer clad people and hokey attitudes. However, we found our way around and landed on the session that changed our lives forever. Not exaggerating, the My Story session with Manish Sabharwal of TeamLease was nothing short of inspiring. The man made smart comments and clearly defined the problem they solve and how they do it. This was a must session for every startup entrepreneur. I am trying to find a video but couldn’t get it anywhere on Youtube. If someone from our readers has it, please mail me the link. I would love to add it to this post. Here are a few things we took down from his speech:

“it is very difficult sometimes to take jobs to people, so we take people to jobs…”

“I have never seen an unsuccessful unhappy entrepreneur, but I have seen many successful unhappy employees”

“it is better to be a bisexual, it at least increases your chances of getting a date”

“you always have to find a sweet spot”

He said the last two things with reference to how you should never try to make your company on a completely westernized model. It is very important to find a sweet spot between having a westernized company and an Indian brick and mortar business. People who find this sweet spot, make a truly global company.

The rest of the summit was a well organized event with crappy food. Lalit Ashoka was nothing compared to hotels in Mumbai and the food served was of sub standard quality. However, the presence of some top honchos from the Indian industry added glitz to the event.

The Morpheus Founders Meet:

This was an event organized by our advisors Nandini and Sameer. The event was at ITC Fortune Select Hotel and had the following attendants:

Attendants:

LifeMojo Team: Himanshu, Namit, Vaun

Storrz: Chandan

CommonFloor: Vikas, Sumeet and Lalit.

GameKraver: Kamal

InstaBlog: Ankit Maheshwari

MVP: Sameer Guglani and Nandini Hiranniah

Speakers:

1. Subrata Mitra from Accel . A very active and successful early and growth stage VC firm working with startups in India, USA, China and London
2. Sharda balaji from Novojuris - a legal firm with special focus on working with Startups
3. Indus Kaitan, Chief Plumber of Sezwho. Indus has spent 10+ years in building startups in silicon valley . SezWho is a universal profile service for the social web - a popular startup in Silicon valley.
4. Harish Gandhi Alok Mittal from Cannan. (Update: Harish came in place of Alok and we had a great session with him)
5. Ananya Majoomdar from Times Private Treaties

As you can see, we had some interesting discussions from a couple of Venture capitalists along with presentations from the Morpheus companies. After an interesting session with Harish Gandhi, we left for Wat Wednesday.

 The last night we spent with LifeMojo’s team at their apartment/office. Real fun people and even more fun with a Red label. So after some casual drinking and fun, we left for our Hotel to catch a train to Mumbai.

Bangalore was an amazing place to be at. We liked everything from the young crowd at M.G.Road to the very literate people who live there and make the city so cool.

PS: We hated the 11:00 p.m deadline. Going there from Mumbai, I felt it is a little harsh on such a vibrant city.