Proto.in – A Pictorial Review

Proto.in, India’s premier event celebrating Indian innovation took place on Saturday & Sunday (Jan 20 & 21). How did it go? I’d say darn good. We had 325 paid participants, more than a 100 above our biggest estimate. Now read that again. 325 paid participants. We had higher turn out than BarCampChennai and BlogCamp, which are free events. This clearly shows the kind of interest in Indian innovation.

Amit Ranjan has cleverly used SlideShare to showcase all the selected startups that showcased their products. Mind you, these are some of the hottest startups in India. These were selected out of a 100 companies that were nominated. Keep an eye on Watblog for Rajiv Dhingra aims to profile all the 30 companies. Gokul was a dedicated live blogger and even managed to capture videos of all the presentations on his Nokia N72. The video and sound clarity may not be good, but you got to admire a guy’s determination and resolve to capture an entire day’s proceedings.

The event was held at IIT Madras auditorium. The event took in four months of planning and execution. Like exams, the last two days are crucial. The organizers were at the venue at day break making sure that the stage backdrop, sound system, projectors are in place. It’s always a nail biting experience but thankfully, it always ends up well at the nick of time.

Did I say we had a packed audience?

We hired a big screen projector with powerful lumens which turned out to be a really good decision.

Standing here are the heads of the selected start-ups for a press shoot.

On 20th, we had a panel discuss and networking dinner at Radisson hotel. This was a invite-only session for the selected startups and venture capitalists. Mahesh Murthy- founding partner of Seed Fund, Ravi Narayanan – founding partner of Mentor Partners, Satya Prabhakar – CEO of Sulekha, and Atul Chitnis – Sr Vice President of Geodesic were the panelists. Vijay Anand, technological entrepreneur at IIT Madras and one of the key forces behind Proto.in was the moderator. I took on the role of the Q&A controller.

I liked this picture. This is one part of the stage.

The lawns in front of the auditorium.

The traditional organizers victory photograph. The team spirit is amazing and everybody were kicked up with the success of the show. Not everything was perfect but it was good enough for us to start our plans for next year’s Proto.in – much bigger and better.