It was a dream come true for two student startup founders from Andhra Pradesh, who got a chance to visit Silicon Valley recently and pitch, network and learn from the best there recently. They were among the team of 33 students from across the country who were a part of the week-long tour to the U.S. under the ‘Start in College’ programme instituted by the Startup Village Collective (SV.CO) – purportedly world’s first digital student incubator and a digital makeover of the Startup Village.
K.V. Ram Harsha, a B.Tech graduate from Visakhapatnam, and M. Prabhakar Yashaswi, a fourth year B.Tech student from Srikakulam, pitched their products at Facebook and other top tech firms like Intel headquarters and Google Launchpad and the Silicon Valley Bank, that has helped fund more than 30,000 startups across the globe.
The students of SV.CO, who were selected from college campuses across India, have been learning how to select an idea, build a prototype and launch to early customers.
Sharing his experiences of Silicon Valley with The Hindu , Ram Harsha said: “There the entire startup atmosphere is electrifying. We could never imagine we would visit Silicon Valley and get a wealth of knowledge for a lifetime to implement in our startup journeys.” Harsha has developed a unique search driven business intelligence tool called Imux that connects to different kinds of databases, extracting data from respective sources and visualise it for the businesses. His was one of the startups that had a beta launch in the Silicon Valley. “We got some terrific feedback from the tech teams and leaders there and many showed their inclination to take up our services. After the trip, we made a huge leap in the user interface of our product after the feedback we received and also got a mentor from Silicon Valley who is now on our advisory board,” said Harsha. With added confidence and a revitalised product look, the young startup team of Imux is now gearing up for its market launch in Product Hunt next month.
Hailing from a remote region of AP, Prabhakar’s U.S. tour opened up a world of startup ideas giving wings to his entrepreneurial dream of creating a healthcare app particularly aimed for tier-2 and tier-3 towns. His product ‘Cure House’ is an online platform to facilitate seamless healthcare facility for patients in villages and towns. “Most startups in India think of monetising from day one. While interacting with global startup leaders at Silicon Valley, we learnt that monetisation shouldn’t be our main goal at the beginning, but solving issues with our startups and giving value to the team is very important to be successful,” he said. Anand Chandrasekharan, who leads partnerships and strategy for Facebook Messenger, provided feedback for students who showcased the prototypes they have built over the last six months with SV.CO’s digital learning platform. Lakshman Kakkirala, co-Founder of Little Eye Labs, the first Indian startup to be acquired by Facebook, shared his journey with the students.
